Latest / Radically Genuine / California Tried to Shut Down the Crappy Childhood Fairy | Anna Runkle
Transcript
- 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:03:13 Speaker 2 Let's talk about CPTSD and what it means to 00:00:03:13 - 00:00:04:05 Speaker 2 to you. 00:00:04:06 - 00:00:10:22 Speaker 1 I literally feel my heart start beating fast when we talk about talking about it, because the state of California 00:00:10:22 - 00:00:16:18 Speaker 1 has tried to destroy my livelihood and my life's work for even saying the word, 00:00:16:18 - 00:00:18:15 Speaker 4 now the state of California 00:00:18:15 - 00:00:22:11 Speaker 4 is trying to tell you, you can't teach this to people anymore. 00:00:22:16 - 00:00:24:20 Speaker 4 people cannot choose to come to you 00:00:25:00 - 00:00:25:15 Speaker 4 you to help 00:00:25:17 - 00:00:28:22 Speaker 4 I'm suing the Board of psychology in federal court, 00:00:29:01 - 00:00:30:12 Speaker 4 they don't care about me personally. 00:00:30:12 - 00:00:32:18 Speaker 4 They want to stop all of us. 00:00:32:18 - 00:00:43:15 Speaker 4 And if they can set a precedent by stopping me, they can put all coaches out of business in California. And if California does it, other states go, well, California did it. 00:00:43:15 - 00:00:58:07 Speaker 4 And next thing you know, they do have a monopoly on what is mental health, what is mental illness and who can who can you talk to? 00:00:58:09 - 00:01:00:23 Speaker 2 Anna, we're so grateful to have you today. 00:01:01:00 - 00:01:03:17 Speaker 3 Roger and Tracy. I'm really glad to be with you. 00:01:03:19 - 00:01:14:14 Speaker 2 2017, when you started Crappy Childhood Ferry, could you have imagined the degree of following that would ensue over the years? 00:01:14:15 - 00:01:19:16 Speaker 3 No, no, I would have been so happy to have 100 followers. 00:01:19:18 - 00:01:31:18 Speaker 2 What were you actually, what were you thinking when you started it? So when you. When you chose Crappy Childhood ferry, which is such an interesting term. What was that thought process going into that? 00:01:31:19 - 00:01:53:02 Speaker 3 Well, when I started this, I was finally taking online something I'd been teaching in person for 20 years, and because I used to work in the health care world, I kind of had a like a helmet on my thinking, like, make it very appropriate for those people. And so the original name of Crappy Childhood Fairy was your Healing year. 00:01:53:02 - 00:02:10:12 Speaker 3 And I thought, well, that's ridiculous. You can't heal in a year. But I was trying to, like, I don't know, make it sound like something you'd want to see. And then I named it Charm School for Feral Girls. And now that's my next book. People didn't. They thought being called feral was offensive. And it came to me one day, literally what I was thinking of. 00:02:10:12 - 00:02:28:00 Speaker 3 I don't know if you remember the fairy on Fractured Fairy Tales, the cartoon that was already like an oldie when I was a kid. It's probably from like the 60s, and it was just like this dumpy little fairy, and I remembered her as having a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. But she didn't, and she would fly around with her wannago bang. 00:02:28:02 - 00:02:39:04 Speaker 3 And that was what I thought. Like, this is not therapy. This is your friend who's been through a lot, telling you straight what works and what doesn't work when you're trying to get your life together. 00:02:39:06 - 00:02:48:16 Speaker 2 Well, it seems like many people resonated with this concept. So how do you make sense of that? The following in itself and the resignation with just that idea. 00:02:48:18 - 00:03:07:23 Speaker 3 Well, I have been teaching the techniques I use for a long time. The thing that made it necessary for me to create a blog, and then a YouTube channel, was when I learned about this thing called complex PTSD. I had never heard of that before, and when I heard about it, I go, that sounds like what I have. 00:03:08:00 - 00:03:39:12 Speaker 3 And later I talked to a therapist who was like, oh yeah, you totally have it. And when I heard about it, I just didn't know that that trauma affects people in ways that can be quite common in what it looks like. Not everybody's the same. Not everybody gets affected the same. I had a very rough childhood, but there was a lot of stuff that was troubled about me that I struggled with, that I literally thought was just me, and I couldn't understand why I never got better, no matter how much I went to therapy and did all the things you were supposed to do, it seemed like you should get better. 00:03:39:13 - 00:03:40:11 Speaker 3 So what were the things. 00:03:40:11 - 00:03:47:12 Speaker 4 You did that you were supposed to do? The things you tried, where you didn't get better? 00:03:47:13 - 00:04:07:10 Speaker 3 Well, I went to therapy for years, and I always talked about the trauma. And I think in those days, like, kind of what? I don't think it was very well understood back then. I started going to therapy as a teenager a little bit. You know, I grew up very poor. My parents couldn't pay for it. But an aunt and uncle sent me once. 00:04:07:11 - 00:04:29:23 Speaker 3 And then when I was 21, I went again. And that therapist told me about the adult child of alcoholics phenomenon, which I certainly am, and it explained a lot and it was exciting. But like that therapist said, you have to go confront your mom about her drinking and about her negligence in allowing abuse to happen to you. So I went and did that and it went disastrously. 00:04:29:23 - 00:04:51:22 Speaker 3 And that was my first introduction to. Just because people are trained in this doesn't mean they know what's effective for me. And then over the years I would keep going. But generally speaking, even though the therapists were good people and well trained and had studied various modalities or disciplines, it was always focus so much on talking about stuff. 00:04:51:23 - 00:04:58:11 Speaker 4 And what did that just talking about it. What was your experience of that? What did it, did it help you at all? 00:04:58:13 - 00:05:20:15 Speaker 3 I think that we all need to tell somebody what happened, and that having it not be secret anymore is definitely an important part of healing. But in terms of repeating and going into it over and over again, the hope that it was going to go somewhere like never manifested. It just it didn't really go anywhere. And in fact, I often left my therapy appointments feeling extremely rattled. 00:05:20:15 - 00:05:36:07 Speaker 3 And I didn't have a word for that. And I was ashamed of it. In fact, my I could I could hardly feel my hands. I'd be shaking. And those days you had to write a check. And even though I had written checks forever, I couldn't remember how to write a check or how much is it? Or what's my name. 00:05:36:09 - 00:05:57:03 Speaker 3 I would just be like, out. And I'm not saying dissociated necessarily. It's later when books started coming out, I learned the word dysregulation. I was like, that is what I have. I couldn't it was really hard for me to even control my handwriting so that the numbers would be legible, that kind of thing. And I used to really beat myself up about that. 00:05:57:03 - 00:06:13:13 Speaker 3 It's not something that I even thought to discuss with the therapist I'm sure they could see, but I would secretly have to sit in my car for half hour, 45 minutes before I could drive again. It was that bad, and it happened every time, and it was just like my private shame that I can't, you know, I'm not getting better. 00:06:13:13 - 00:06:36:03 Speaker 3 What's wrong with me? It made me really hopeless. And I would ask, like, why aren't I getting better? And they go, well, you're processing a lot. And nowadays I would say, no, I wasn't really processing anything. I wasn't processing, to me means you're converting a very charged thought or memory or feeling that's full of adrenaline and cortisol. It's it becomes something that's a memory but not charged. 00:06:36:04 - 00:06:54:18 Speaker 3 And it's a wonderful thing when that happens to bad things, bad memories, that's very freeing. But that would never happen. Everything just remained charged. And it's very cluttered, you know, like it all just sits in your head. And every time a new piece of information comes in, good or bad, there's not a lot of space to interpret that information. 00:06:54:18 - 00:07:04:23 Speaker 3 And so when I did eventually learn to regulate accidentally, it completely changed my ability to think and be present. 00:07:05:03 - 00:07:08:02 Speaker 4 How did you learn that? 00:07:08:04 - 00:07:28:17 Speaker 3 Well, things came to a head when I was 30, and I was going through a very I called them trauma storms. When everything bad happens at once and it's more than you can bear. Like you can take one thing, maybe two things, but the third thing happens and you just kind of break. And that's what had happened. And the third thing that happened in this trauma storm was that I got attacked on the street. 00:07:28:17 - 00:07:51:18 Speaker 3 I got beaten unconscious just randomly by four kids, and they broke my jaw and my teeth and separated my ear from my head. And it was it was bad. And I was unconscious for a lot of it. I woke up in the middle of it and screamed and saved my own life. It was really a profound experience inside my spirit, really. 00:07:51:18 - 00:08:07:23 Speaker 3 When I made a decision like, I'm coming back, I can let this continue and I'll die in a little bit. That's what I want and I can scream and stop it. I just kind of saw the choice and I was like, oh heck yeah, I want to live. I'm going to scream. So I screamed and it was really a tough recovery. 00:08:08:01 - 00:08:32:12 Speaker 3 And unfortunately, even though I had like regular HMO health insurance at the time, they didn't understand, that doctor didn't understand. And my therapist at the time. Didn't understand what I believe was PTSD. You know, I was nearly killed through a violent attack and they just treated it. They the doctor kept saying, well, you weren't raped. And it's like, true. 00:08:32:13 - 00:08:53:05 Speaker 3 And the therapist was like, let's talk about it. And when I when that was just, I was deteriorating and I went three times a week, then we upped it because it's this nice thing the state does for victims of violent crime. They give you money to go get help. So I increased the amount of therapy I was getting and but we were. 00:08:53:05 - 00:09:12:09 Speaker 3 So it meant that I was spending 50 minutes, three times a week talking about the attack. And my mother had just died. And that was a really hard thing. You know, where she. I think back then, I really hoped she was going to come around and say, I do love you. You are good. And she didn't, you know, she just died without doing that. 00:09:12:11 - 00:09:32:03 Speaker 3 And so we talked a lot about that. How hard is that and how did you feel and what what are your symptoms right now and all of that? It's not just that it was keeping me dwelling on the negative. It's that it for my brain. It just rattled the heck out of me. I couldn't process it just would throw me into dysregulation. 00:09:32:06 - 00:09:54:10 Speaker 3 And so I didn't have a word for that. Then I literally thought it was just like, well, I'm just crazy. I'm just the FDP girl, you know? And so it was be 20 years before I learned what dysregulation was, immediately recognized it in myself. And when I started talking to friends in my 12 step group about it, every one was like, what is that? 00:09:54:10 - 00:10:12:23 Speaker 3 Tell me about it. And I used to go to the 12 step program for families of alcoholics. So everybody there was affected by alcoholism. Many had similar problems to me. Not all. Some of them were dealing with different stuff, but the ones who had what I had. I said, you can't really talk about outside things in a 12 step meeting. 00:10:13:00 - 00:10:39:23 Speaker 3 So I said, come to my house on Tuesday and I'll tell you what I read, and I'll tell you what my thoughts on it. And my living room was packed, and the first thing they did is they started going around and wanting to tell their trauma stories. And I already knew after 20 years and 12 step, like, it's not a good idea to just focus and talk about the bad things like structure is a good thing, structured therapy, a 12 step guideline. 00:10:40:00 - 00:11:14:09 Speaker 3 You know, structure can be a good thing, like just focusing on the bad thing. And I feel like my culture and my generation, and definitely this generation has been trained that you should talk and talk and talk about your trauma and identify with it and really, really go for it with that. So it was a radical change in me, the combination of what had worked for me in in that 12 step program and what I had learned using these techniques that I was shown the night right after my life was saved by me screaming. 00:11:14:09 - 00:11:33:04 Speaker 3 Somebody showed me a couple of techniques that that helped me. You know, I was always the rebel. People would get annoyed with me in the meetings because I would sometimes say things like, it's really important that you focus on the solution, and that's not an alien to 12 step life. But I would say a lot of people never get it. 00:11:33:04 - 00:11:53:20 Speaker 3 And so I spent years sitting in meetings like watching who gets better, who doesn't get better and the people who don't get better. The pattern was they are always talking about the past and other people. And the people who do get better are thinking more about like what's going on with me, that I keep making the same mistake over and over again. 00:11:53:20 - 00:12:17:01 Speaker 3 What can I do differently? And so without disavowing the past, you know, there's to shift the focus onto what's going on with me that I just keep this, keep doing this negative pattern. And, you know, when you grow up in a family is messed up as mine. You get patterns. You do things in a funny way. Some of them are social, some of them are behavioral, some of them are emotional. 00:12:17:03 - 00:12:35:19 Speaker 3 You know, for me, like, I didn't know how to use a fork and knife together until I was 12, I taught myself, I grew up in a commune with hippies and nobody fed us. And so, you know, we would just like, get if we could get a box of cereal at 711 or something. It was like, oh, yeah, we'd get our hands in there and eat it like that, you know? 00:12:35:21 - 00:13:02:12 Speaker 3 And so I had that was like, what? I mean, social. My parents were educated, but we were really, really poor. I was dirty, I had bad teeth and things like that. That's that's a social barrier and things that by the time I was 12 or so I knew to feel ashamed of myself. And when I went, I just had a lot of ways that I didn't fit in, but I always thought it was just me. 00:13:02:12 - 00:13:37:19 Speaker 3 So learning when I heard that there was this, this like diagnosis out there, which I now think is very fraught. People have these different ideas about what it is, and I don't really need people to have it. And I always tell them, maybe you were diagnosed, maybe you weren't. Maybe you have something different. Who knows? If you identify with the problems I have, which is just getting very rattled, having emotional overreactions, being really brilliant at something and then having this great need to like, retreat and never do it again, that, that kind of thing. 00:13:37:19 - 00:13:49:12 Speaker 3 If you relate to me, come watch my videos and I'll talk to you about this. And I would talk about what I did to overcome it. And that's what made it really popular. It was just like one of our own talking about things that have worked. That's all it was. 00:13:49:13 - 00:14:14:23 Speaker 2 You said something really interesting before that. I feel like we have to get back to, because I've seen this online from mental health professionals. They make the statement that therapy is benign, it can never harm or hurt anybody. And in some ways, they try to propose that everybody should be in therapy, almost like it's exercise or something like this. 00:14:15:00 - 00:14:22:16 Speaker 2 And your story is very familiar to me. I'm just curious to know when you did have those therapy sessions, how much time did they allow for you? 00:14:22:18 - 00:14:23:19 Speaker 3 50 minutes. 00:14:24:01 - 00:14:47:09 Speaker 2 Yeah. And think about it, right. You're asking somebody because you have this belief that if you get them to focus on and talk about what is really painful and traumatic in their lives, then you have an emotional reaction to it. But if the time ends up like 50 minutes has gone, you're done no matter what. Where that person is. 00:14:47:10 - 00:15:13:08 Speaker 2 And it it clearly demonstrates to me that the therapist had a belief system, that what is curative is just talking about it. And then they would view that experiencing emotion is healthy. And what your story tells us is that one can leave that experience feeling much, much worse and even destabilized than they did when they started the process. 00:15:13:09 - 00:15:23:18 Speaker 4 Wasn't there a study on this that was done after nine over 11 on people who were impacted by the experiencing the towers falling. 00:15:23:19 - 00:15:48:22 Speaker 2 It was an extremely impactful study for my career because it was the first large scale, randomized controlled trial with first responders, with families of victims, people who were right there witnessing the towers go down. And so they wanted to see if the mental health system, if you could intervene. So they had something like it's called critical stress debriefing. 00:15:49:00 - 00:16:35:12 Speaker 2 And so the idea was if you can get somebody talking about it right away, it would alleviate PTSD symptoms. So we had multiple arms of this study where one group was allowed to naturally recover. So there is no intervention, no mental health therapist. No one is forcing you to do anything. And then you have the group that goes into a structured treatment intervention, which is let's talk about what happened, this idea that you can process it and it would lead to better functioning, overwhelming the group that was provided, the critical stuff, stress debriefing, who were forced to talk about it got worse, developed PTSD symptoms. 00:16:35:12 - 00:17:00:18 Speaker 2 So in my community, and this is the problem with pop culture psychology that we get pushed out there is people would call in to our office like days after a traumatic event, so it could be a car accident. I remember one particular case, this this young, poor young girl, eight years old, opens the door, dog runs out right into the street, gets hit by a car. 00:17:00:20 - 00:17:17:08 Speaker 2 And of course, there's the ones that we all know about assault, sexual assaults, things of that nature. And they believe they had to get into therapy right away so they're not damaged. And my practice had to communicate. 00:17:17:10 - 00:17:43:09 Speaker 2 Don't you can don't go see anyone for 90 days. There's a natural recovery process. You're resilient. We so sorry for what's happened to you. But who is your support system? Let this happen naturally. Don't force yourself to have to focus on anything because this was the best science at the time. But anywhere else around us, you know, anyone else they'd go to, they'd say, yes, go in right away. 00:17:43:09 - 00:18:08:22 Speaker 2 And it was such an indicator to me that the mental health world therapy was not governed by any solid theoretical orientation or sound science. They didn't even monitor their outcomes. Anything would go, including things that I see as absurd, like, go confront your parents. You know, it became almost cult like. And there they always defended themselves no matter what. 00:18:08:23 - 00:18:35:04 Speaker 2 Right? If somebody got worse, it's because a person had mental illness. If someone got better, it's because of what we did. So it's like it seems very clearly that what you needed and it didn't matter who you went to, because I get the sense that you actually tried out different people when you're when your needs were in met, which I think is typical, like it's what you said is meaningful because you begin to assume the problem is you. 00:18:35:06 - 00:18:41:23 Speaker 3 Yeah. I think they saw me as resistant, but I was actually quite persistent. Yeah. 00:18:42:05 - 00:18:49:02 Speaker 4 So what did you find then that did work for you? Can you tell us that that story? 00:18:49:04 - 00:19:13:08 Speaker 3 Well, while I was still in therapy, but when I was very close to taking my own life out of hopelessness, maybe two months after the assault, I was getting worse. The the therapist who was helping me, who I loved, you know, I was not making sense to her. She wasn't making sense to me. And I felt and I had pushed everybody away. 00:19:13:08 - 00:19:56:02 Speaker 3 I had really, you know, because I had both a head injury and I had PTSD, very traumatic experience. And later I was to find out if you had a lot of childhood trauma, and I certainly did. Sometimes you can compartmentalize it in a pretty good way and function pretty well. And there were like cracks in the way I functioned that came out in like close relationships or handling things that were unfair, things like that, that I would be a little intense, but I just the genie got out of the bottle when I got attacked, all the all the wounds, not consciously thinking about childhood, but I don't know what you would even call it a 00:19:56:02 - 00:20:22:20 Speaker 3 breakdown. I just could not handle anything. And I also became very like, I couldn't read, I would try to read and we all do that sometimes where you keep reading the same sentence over and over again. But that was all I could do. And I'd be talking on the phone and I would forget who I was talking to, and I would struggle to dial the number on those old push button grids, you know, because you have to like, basically look at a number, hold it in your mind. 00:20:22:20 - 00:20:43:15 Speaker 3 And I think that's visual processing. There was all this stuff that wasn't working. And my job, the doctor said, take three months off. Well, that was not possible for me. My job wouldn't give it to me. And I had a week off and I went back and I started. I just was acting very weird. And and I was about this close to getting fired. 00:20:43:15 - 00:21:01:09 Speaker 3 So I had already lost my last friend. I had already I was already on the verge of getting fired, and I was thinking of ending my life, but I was in this theater group. I was always kind of this funny theater kid type person, and I gave a ride to somebody new to the group, a woman named Rachel. 00:21:01:11 - 00:21:28:04 Speaker 3 And she was really interesting to me because she was covered with tattoos, and she was 23 years old. I was 30. That's a big age difference when you're that age. And she was totally alive with God. And because I lived in Berkeley, people who talked openly about God like they weren't our kind of people, they were like some other people, you know, and and they're weird. 00:21:28:04 - 00:21:49:03 Speaker 3 And we don't get them and they're, you know, to be looked down upon. But she had such a, such a, like radiance about her, such a air of wonderfulness that I just became fascinated, like, what are you saying about God? And literally, like every other word out of her mouth was the F word. It was this combination I'd never heard before. 00:21:49:04 - 00:22:11:11 Speaker 3 And what it was was she. She was a young, sober person who had lived on the streets of the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and she was going to meetings with the hardcore street drunks, and she talked like they did. And there was something about that energy having come from a family riddled with alcoholism and addiction and selling drugs out of the living room and things. 00:22:11:11 - 00:22:32:04 Speaker 3 It was very rough to be with people who had that same energy but sober. It was like lovely and attractive to me, and I had heard of sobriety. But to actually see somebody sober and to recognize their energy was healing in its own right. It was so exciting, she said. Here, read the Big Book of AA. I'm not an alcoholic. 00:22:32:04 - 00:22:50:11 Speaker 3 And I tell you, if I could have been, I would have been certainly tried. I mean, I was I was like a bad teenager. But whatever it is in our composition that makes us unable to stop. I don't have that. I stop. It just gets tedious to me. And drugs and alcohol just lose their shine pretty quickly for me. 00:22:50:11 - 00:23:17:13 Speaker 3 So. So that never happened. But most of my family died of it. It's a very it really took out everybody and I literally my mom was heavily drunk the whole time I was in her womb and smoking two packs a day, maybe for. So I was exposed to all that stuff. But there was something I spiritually recognized in her, and the way that she was so happy and and at that. 00:23:17:13 - 00:23:37:16 Speaker 3 I still know her. And you know, we're all like, we're all still ourselves, but we're all evolved quite a bit. But at that time, she was so abandoned to her spiritual experience, she would just be like, I don't know, I'm just going to wait for God's taxi. I don't have a ride. Let's just see. And then she would just go stand outside and somebody would show up and say, hey, what are you doing? 00:23:37:16 - 00:23:54:19 Speaker 3 And she's going, I need a ride. That's how I ended up giving her a ride. I was God's taxi, you know? So. So that happened. But I told her, I told her in the car, I said, I'm thinking of killing myself tomorrow. And that's like, I don't know why I did that, because that's a really dumb thing to do. 00:23:54:19 - 00:24:02:01 Speaker 3 If you actually want to ask if you're having a cry for help, I don't know. It's it's going to get you locked up either way. You don't want that. 00:24:02:02 - 00:24:09:12 Speaker 2 And but I'm curious. I'm curious to know what do you think led you to to say that out loud? 00:24:09:13 - 00:24:33:11 Speaker 3 Well, I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I feel entirely like I was. A spiritual intervention happened for me, that that I had had a profound experience that had destruct. I had ego destruction pretty bad there, and I really thought I couldn't go on. And a door opened that night like, here's how you can go on. 00:24:33:11 - 00:24:49:00 Speaker 3 And it's actually quite pleasant and fun, and you can leave all this crap behind more or less. That's that's what it felt like. But when I said yes to her to learn how to do this, she said, I'm going to show you this thing if you want. She made me tea. She let me talk about stuff. She said I felt the same way. 00:24:49:00 - 00:25:05:11 Speaker 3 She told me a little bit about her experience. I wish I could remember it if I had known at the time how significant a turning point in my life it would be. I would have taken notes. But at the time, what I do remember and she told me to, I was a little bit like resistant, like don't tell me what to do. 00:25:05:13 - 00:25:22:21 Speaker 3 And and she was like, fine, die if you want. But I particularly balked. She said, you begin take out a she gave me some paper and a pen. She goes, Put God at the top of the page. You're going to be writing to God. She said to do that. And I was like, God. I had all these, like, Berkeley opinions about it, you know? 00:25:22:22 - 00:25:38:08 Speaker 3 And she said, okay, fine, you'll be dead tomorrow, I don't care. She was like that about it. So I said, all right, all right. And I put it and she taught me how. And I always want to say caveat this I have a free course. I will teach you exactly how to do this, but exact is important with this technique. 00:25:38:09 - 00:25:57:10 Speaker 3 It's not venting. It's not like a written rant about things that bother you, but it's a way of getting on paper. The disturbance in here. Here I'm pointing to my thinking and my feelings. You know, the disturbance, you name it and you get it out on paper. And then there's a prayer at the end to ask God to remove it. 00:25:57:11 - 00:26:14:23 Speaker 3 And it's the it's fears and resentments. And anybody who's been in 12 step will recognize fear. And resentment is sort of the currency of the bad thing. It's like the form that it takes that that negative force takes the form of fear and resentment. But at the time I just wrote it, I had so much resentment and so much fear. 00:26:15:00 - 00:26:30:03 Speaker 3 So she told me the format and I started writing. I'm like, how long do I go? And she said, just write until you feel better. Well, two hours later, she's like, look, it's 5:00 am. I got to go to bed, go home, right as long as you want. Call me tomorrow if you want and read what you wrote. 00:26:30:05 - 00:26:54:07 Speaker 3 So I did that and I went home, wrote a little bit, went to sleep, and I woke up and for the first time. And I didn't know how long, I couldn't even remember. I just, I felt good, I just felt yummy, I felt okay, and I was so excited about it. But I'd been excited about things before and they always ended up. 00:26:54:09 - 00:27:14:09 Speaker 3 I call it the the the like creepy disappointment feeling where you're like the new relationship, the new therapist, the new thing, you know, the new pair of shoes. And then after a while you're like, oh, it's not going to work. It's just another thing that's not going to work. And that's the only experience I'd ever had with things I tried. 00:27:14:10 - 00:27:39:13 Speaker 3 I was very persistent. You said, what did I try was therapy books. Well, 12 step did work, but that was after I had this. This in my hands. Talking to friends, talking to girlfriends, trying to get fixed in a relationship that was near and dear to my heart. Like I feel so anxious around you. Fix me, fix me or it's love at first sight. 00:27:39:13 - 00:27:56:09 Speaker 3 Like make this anxious, creepy, disappointment feeling go away. It's you, it's you. Fix me, fix me. And she was just very tough love. She's like, I'm not going to fix you. You can talk to God, you know, and this is on you and God. I'm just telling you, I'm just giving you a format. She's very tough with me. 00:27:56:14 - 00:28:21:16 Speaker 3 And at that time, probably the biggest thing getting me down in my life was a heartbreak that I had. And there had been a married guy in my life, and we had been friends for a long time, and we really it really was just like friends. Except not for me, you know, not for me. And there was just enough there to keep me going for like five years. 00:28:21:16 - 00:28:36:13 Speaker 3 And it just it just just, like, killed my soul. It was terrible. When I was in therapy, she would ask me about it. Tell me about that. Did you talk to him? What did he say? Oh, you. You wrote a poem. Oh, you know Rachel, she's like. 00:28:36:13 - 00:28:38:14 Speaker 5 What the fuck are you doing? 00:28:38:16 - 00:29:02:07 Speaker 3 Yeah. No, no, no. She's like, do you ever want to get married? I'm like, yes. And she goes, then you're not going to do this? And for about five seconds I was like, how dare you tell me what I can and can't do? I still had so much pride about it. But it's really wonderful when your ego is just too broken to stage a fight against what is obviously in your best interest to just be sane. 00:29:02:12 - 00:29:19:17 Speaker 3 And it was like the best thing anybody ever said. She's just like, cut it out. I'm like, I can't just do that. How is anybody supposed to do that? And she introduced the novel idea. It's like, you stop doing it, you stop thinking about it and you stop talking about it. And if you have something to say, put it into your page with your fears and resentments. 00:29:19:19 - 00:29:42:05 Speaker 3 And I was a little outraged, like, fix me, fix me. You said, you know. But as soon, within two weeks of doing this technique, you write and then you follow it with meditation. And what she suggested to me is to learn transcendental meditation. So I went and learned it. I couldn't believe I had to pay for it again, like I shouldn't have to pay for people to help me. 00:29:42:05 - 00:30:04:15 Speaker 3 But that meditation teacher is still my friend, and all I ever want for him is to be able to pay their pay their bills, you know. Of course I do. He works hard, helping many people learn to meditate, and I learned to do that. It was about two weeks and I didn't have PTSD symptoms anymore. I could use the phone, I could think, and in fact forced back to work as I was. 00:30:04:15 - 00:30:27:21 Speaker 3 I was sitting in a business meeting and I had never really sat through a meeting, paying attention and hearing what everybody said. It was very, very hard for me to hold my focus. It had always been hard, but especially after the assault, I just and it just like I got to a level of ability to listen and focus and just sit in the room and pay attention to what was being said that I had never had before. 00:30:27:23 - 00:30:49:23 Speaker 3 And I heard what everybody said. And at the end of the meeting, I said, well, you know, what I'm hearing is and I held forth about something I saw and everybody literally like turned around because it was like a great answer. It solved the problem. And suddenly this problem employee started to be listened to gradually and soon my career took off. 00:30:49:23 - 00:31:22:04 Speaker 3 So that was two weeks in and I would say 3 or 4 weeks in, I had a radical experience of the reality of God, which obviously I had had. I was I was a very naturally spiritual kid. I walked myself to church as a child, despite my parents mocking me. I was just naturally spiritual. I used to write stories and paint pictures about like, people who's like the character Heidi, you know, the Johanna, the character of Heidi. 00:31:22:05 - 00:31:42:06 Speaker 3 To me, like, I saw that as like a beautiful spiritual story that she goes to her grandfather, who's like a sour, old bitter guy who's been through a lot, and through the metaphor of drinking goat milk, you know, she just brings joy and happiness. And then the cousin Clara, who's lost the use of her legs because of this sad accident. 00:31:42:06 - 00:32:00:20 Speaker 3 And this the dad saved the child instead of the wife. And everybody's resentful. I think that's why the grandfather's resentful. Because the wife is, I don't know, I may be getting it wrong, but it's a really messed up family dynamic. And Heidi is just so beautiful and sunny and full of love that everybody just kind of, like, gets through that and they're happy. 00:32:01:02 - 00:32:22:19 Speaker 3 That kind of thing really spoke to me as a kid. So that was that was my calling already showing up when I was five, about like what I like. And I was telling you guys when we had dinner when I was a kid, I would make up little sayings, little moral sayings. My family had no morals. My real dad actually did. 00:32:22:19 - 00:32:35:09 Speaker 3 My real dad was just like infuriated by what was happening in Berkeley in the late 60s and early 70s. And he would use very unkind words about everybody. 00:32:35:11 - 00:32:49:23 Speaker 3 And but it was the destruction of the basically ordered society that had existed in California and specifically Berkeley until that time that he liked, that he was into. And it turned into all this, like LSD and free love and. 00:32:50:01 - 00:33:15:05 Speaker 2 I'm always fascinated by what actually helps people. Right. And in this particular situation, what a juxtaposition between therapy and meeting Rachel in therapy. It almost seemed like there was this voyeuristic aspect to the therapist who was attending to and even reinforcing, like, behaviors that were very destructive for you. 00:33:15:07 - 00:33:37:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, I can theorize. I really I mean, I loved her. She was a good person. She was very freaked out when I suddenly got happy. That didn't seem right to her. She. Maybe she hadn't seen it before. It looked disturbing to her. She thought that maybe I'd had a break with reality. Really? Just because you were happy now? 00:33:37:06 - 00:33:55:16 Speaker 1 Well, well, to be specific, you know, first I went in there and I said, I learned this new thing, I feel better. Oh, great. Great. Then I said, you know, there was a day that came. I said, I just feel like coming here and talking about bad stuff. I just, I feel kind of done and I'm not interested in opening it up again. 00:33:55:17 - 00:34:17:04 Speaker 1 I feel like I know what I know about it, and what I'm really interested in is continuing with what I'm doing with my techniques, with writing and meditating and just experiencing this freedom that would come every time I did it. I did it twice a day, and she felt like that. She said, well, I'm really worried that you're not safe. 00:34:17:04 - 00:34:40:10 Speaker 1 And I want to make sure, you know, I don't want like somebody just like running away from therapy when they're in a really bad place. I could understand how that would have alarmed her. So she said, can you come for three more visits? So this was a couple months at the end. You know, when I stopped being depressed and I just felt like I was on a, you know, once I, once I had had this radical experience that I will tell you about. 00:34:40:10 - 00:34:59:19 Speaker 1 I it just it had a different resonance for me, the whole idea of storytelling about what had happened to me, it receded into the past where it belonged. It just wasn't all charged. And but that didn't sound right to her. It had looked abrupt from her point of view, I think. And so I came three more times and talked to her. 00:34:59:21 - 00:35:16:00 Speaker 1 But I felt really judged. And one of the things I said is I had a radical experience where I realized God is real and that God is very much aware of me and everything's okay. And she, in her paradigm, that sounded like crazy. 00:35:16:01 - 00:35:16:21 Speaker 4 Yeah. Wow. 00:35:16:22 - 00:35:38:02 Speaker 2 Tracy, let me ask you a question, because you and I have been talking about this as something that I think is critical in our culture right now. And we've seen cases and we've spoken to people where their identification with experiencing God has been labeled as a delusion. 00:35:38:05 - 00:35:54:00 Speaker 4 I mean, even people who have experienced some form of religious conversion, and it ends up with them in a psych ward for no, no reason that could possibly be justified other than the materialist view of the person diagnosing them. 00:35:54:01 - 00:36:29:08 Speaker 2 It brings us to our conversation last night at dinner. I was really interested in the culture in which you were living, and what it's like in the San Francisco Bay area, Silicon Valley. Yeah, just getting an understanding of politically, financially, culturally what how humans interact in that type of part of the country because it's so dialectically opposed to my personal experience, and I'm curious to know how much that came into play with what they identify to be mental health treatment. 00:36:29:10 - 00:36:45:21 Speaker 1 Well, she was a therapist, so she doesn't disclose what she really believes. But like so many people, she had a Buddha statue. I have a little cartoon of a therapist sitting there going, how do you feel about that? In the little call out says Obligatory Buddha statue, and I notice there's one there. It's a. 00:36:45:21 - 00:36:48:12 Speaker 2 Thing with the biblical statements. Be not afraid. 00:36:48:13 - 00:36:49:09 Speaker 5 Exactly. 00:36:49:11 - 00:36:55:17 Speaker 1 But where? Where I live in the Bay area. That's the one acceptable religion. 00:36:55:19 - 00:36:57:12 Speaker 2 Why is that, do you think? 00:36:57:13 - 00:37:24:18 Speaker 1 Because in my opinion, because you don't have to change. You don't have to follow anything. Rather, you don't have to follow any direction in terms of how you comport yourself sexually. You can sort of come as you are. I mean, really any religion, you can come as you are, but people perceive a lot of religious conversions as, oh, now you're one of those judgy people, and you think I should be a nun? 00:37:24:18 - 00:37:51:00 Speaker 1 I used to feel very, very threatened by religious people myself, and I literally thought that when I had my spiritual awakening, I was like, oh no, I have to be a nun. And I later was very clear. You're never required to do something that makes you cringe. But but we change. And to actually convert means to change and to change our behavior and what we consider like good or bad. 00:37:51:01 - 00:38:14:00 Speaker 1 I mean, I was really very much brought up in the culture. The grown ups in my life were the therapist, you know, when I was a young person in therapy and there was a huge idea of moral relativism, that there's no such thing as good and bad. It's all about how you feel about it. Or maybe at most, they would have humanism if they were religious. 00:38:14:00 - 00:38:33:15 Speaker 1 Maybe they were Unitarian, Universalist, or Buddhist. That's totally acceptable to this day. Black people are allowed to be Christian, not white people. Yeah, it's it's very, very judgy. And when my husband and I got married in a church in 2014, many family members wouldn't come and they were. 00:38:33:18 - 00:38:36:02 Speaker 4 Wouldn't attend because your wedding was in a church. 00:38:36:04 - 00:38:44:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. They thought that I, you know, it was more of the belief system. You know, you've had some sort of breakdown, you're being coerced. You've gone to the dark side and. 00:38:44:09 - 00:38:46:18 Speaker 2 The dark side being the side of God. Yeah. 00:38:46:20 - 00:39:14:01 Speaker 1 Well, here's here's what people would say charitably. I can see why somebody with your background would want to have rituals. And that's what they imagined that I was like. I'd really like to have some rituals. I think I'll get married in a church, but I, I had a spiritual awakening that was so much bigger than one thing. It was it was it was just a completely different foundation of understanding what reality is. 00:39:14:03 - 00:39:40:12 Speaker 1 The thing that happened was I was walking. I was with Rachel that afternoon and we were walking in nature, and it was late winter and it was raining. It was very green and everything was still really hard and messed up in my life. But there was just this hope, you know, this spring of hope. I was just excited and crying and excited and, you know, it was it was this turning point and we weren't talking. 00:39:40:13 - 00:40:00:02 Speaker 1 I wish again, if I had written it down, it would be very interesting to me. Now, I don't know what we were talking about, probably guys or something, you know, but I just for about two hours, it just all of a sudden I became aware that I could just see the life in all things, the light. It's like a light. 00:40:00:03 - 00:40:22:09 Speaker 1 It's not it's not a physical light. It's to just put it in words. Always cheapens it. But I could just see that even the rocks were with me. Even the rocks, the plants were definitely. And a little bit I popped out of time. We have artichoke plants in the hills in February. They start to come up and they get quite big and prickly, you know, by August. 00:40:22:11 - 00:40:38:21 Speaker 1 But when they're first coming up, they look kind of like little spiders. My stepdad was a spider, so I see spiders and they're like cute to me. So they're like little spiders coming up with. They put their legs out and they start coming up. And when I popped out of time a little bit, they were just like, coming up. 00:40:39:02 - 00:40:59:04 Speaker 1 And it's kind of what you might see if you were on psychedelics. But it wasn't. I was just seeing I was seeing out of time. And what I saw was how alive the little plants are. And then I saw these little seedlings on the ground. They were seeds of something, and they were just little sprouts coming up, and they were all turned to the sun like this. 00:40:59:06 - 00:41:23:20 Speaker 1 And my heart just melted. I'm like, look at the little baby plants turned towards the sun. You know what? Good little eggs and spirits they are just good things, you know, they were just. Just like lovable dear things all around me, even the rocks. And then I the awareness just kind of like, turned inward and said, so what must you be if a seedling or a rock is that beautiful and precious? 00:41:23:21 - 00:41:47:20 Speaker 1 How could it possibly be true that I should die because I just am just so no good? And that was corrected right there. That idea, you know, that many people had tried to help me with. But there's no rational way at that. It. I think there's probably a psychological reason I came to feel that way. And I think it's it's kind of a it's a dark place in the human soul. 00:41:47:22 - 00:42:04:04 Speaker 1 Maybe everybody has a little of it. But my mom would say again and again she'd get drunk and say, I wish I'd never had you. You know, I should never have had children, that sort of thing. If I didn't have you, I could have such a great life. She'd say stuff like that. And even as a tiny kid, I knew she just. 00:42:04:05 - 00:42:29:07 Speaker 1 She just says that it's not true. But it gets to you. One friend told me a priest actually said, you know what that is? That's a curse. And you have to. You have to, like, reject curses like that. It doesn't matter how she felt about me. I'm a human, just like all of humans and I belong. And just like all living things, I belong. 00:42:29:07 - 00:42:45:05 Speaker 1 I get to be here. And that's what I saw that day. And I waited. I waited for another shoe to drop. I used to drive to work. I drive home from work. That was my thinking time. I'd be like, I wonder when the creepy, disappointed feeling is going to come down again and I'll be like, oh, the plants, they're just dead. 00:42:45:05 - 00:43:04:17 Speaker 1 Nothing. But it just never came. I had a new floor so I could be sad. I could have terrible things happen in my life over the next decades, but it would never be like that where I'd think to myself, it would just be better for everybody if I was dead. Yeah. It wouldn't. 00:43:04:19 - 00:43:29:11 Speaker 2 So I think it I find it fascinating because you're in an environment where there's some noticeable change for the better that you're going through, a period where there's more aliveness to you and there's a greater awareness of the meaningfulness of all of this journey. Right. And you're starting to shift away from a focus and attention on your past and what has harmed you. 00:43:29:11 - 00:43:41:17 Speaker 2 And you're almost, like blossoming into an expanded consciousness in the way of seeing the world that benefits you. But it provokes fear in the mental health professional. 00:43:41:19 - 00:44:08:01 Speaker 1 Yeah. And I'm sure I've heard of I've heard of therapists out there who would have recognized, you know, it's actually in the forms of spiritual awakening that are known. It fits a pattern. It's it's a normal thing for people to experience. But that was not that was not in their curriculum. And and so they didn't recognize it. And so they became totally irrelevant to me. 00:44:08:01 - 00:44:34:10 Speaker 1 It's just not a place I wanted to go for help. It didn't it didn't mean anything. And so without rancor, I left. I just moved on. And what's interesting is that last therapist who I'd seen for those last two years of getting therapy subsequently and not long after that showed up. And one of the things I had done, I had started to go to these 12 step meetings and that the 12 step meeting was a support, but not the source of the thing that had happened to me. 00:44:34:10 - 00:44:54:18 Speaker 1 The awakening happened. First, my friend Rachel said you should go to a 12 step meeting because in the 12 steps you need to be sharing your awakening with others, and it's unheard of to be brand new and immediately start sharing it with others. But that was the case with me because it happened already. And then I learned the 12 step structure that basically allows you to incorporate that into your life. 00:44:54:18 - 00:45:18:03 Speaker 1 This 12 steps are a wonderful system. A lot of people don't really do them. A lot of people are coming in there and using it like group therapy, taking turns talking about problems. But there's a in a meeting where there's enough people who are talking about that 12 step thing where you're admitting you're not able to solve your own problems, that there is a higher power, that you're willing to open up to that, that you're willing to face. 00:45:18:03 - 00:45:37:03 Speaker 1 Where am I getting in my own way and do something about it and then willing to share it with others? So. So I was sort of doing all of the above and making some of the classic rookie mistakes. But all in all, like, so wonderful. And within two weeks people were asking me to sponsor them, which it sounds arrogant and I say it humbly, I did my best. 00:45:37:04 - 00:45:57:17 Speaker 1 We always try and it takes a lot of practice. But over the years I ended up sponsoring 300 women there ish. And because when people can see that you have it going on that that like lightness and you can tell them, this is how I used to be and they recognize themselves in you and you go, here's what I did. 00:45:57:18 - 00:46:14:04 Speaker 1 And then they just they're basically, no matter what you're saying about your present day life, because it's still just life. Life has problems. But they I don't know when people talk about having eyes to see. They see the light in you. The light I saw in the rocks. The light I saw in Rachel. I think they saw in me. 00:46:14:09 - 00:46:35:03 Speaker 1 And I remember people feeling really disappointed when I would just be like an ordinary person who was cranky and, you know, screwing things up. And it's really easy to put people on a pedestal like that. So that's part of spiritual maturity too, is just learning. Like, yeah, we're still human. We're still we're still subject to, you know, making mistakes. 00:46:35:03 - 00:46:58:11 Speaker 1 And and that's what I love about getting older as I start going. Yeah. Everybody. You know, it's okay. There's no nobody's required to be perfect. So there was a lot of that and and but therapy the therapist showed up in the meetings and she never even said hi. She was in my meeting and she wouldn't even say hi. 00:46:58:13 - 00:47:10:06 Speaker 1 And then I had a baby, and I had to bring my little boy to the meeting. And he was he would have these big, really loud poops in the meeting and everyone would laugh and she wouldn't laugh. So what. 00:47:10:07 - 00:47:20:13 Speaker 4 Role do these steps that you learned, this thing that you learned from Rachel? What role does that play in your life now? What impact did it have ongoing? 00:47:20:15 - 00:47:45:20 Speaker 1 Well, there came a time when my participation in the 12 step group had a conflict of interest because when I became aware my program was for families of alcoholics, and we talked about being affected by somebody else's drinking, and then it was saying I admitting to being powerless over alcohol. I had always known there was some way that I was this bull in a China shop where, yeah, yeah, my mom was a drunk. 00:47:45:21 - 00:48:15:16 Speaker 1 A lot of my family members were yeah, it affected me. But there's something in me. My mom died like the same week. I started going, and I continued to have the thing that I had. And that's why when I finally it was 20 years later, I read about what is complex PTSD, and I recognized myself in it that I was like, for the first time, I realized that is the bull in the China shop. 00:48:15:16 - 00:48:38:08 Speaker 1 That is the way that I feel different from, say, like that, that those meetings would have spouses of alcoholics, sober spouses of alcoholics. They were there to there's parents of alcoholics or addicts there. We have different life circumstances and it affects people in different patterns. Right. But growing up in a house where everybody's shit faced, it's like a different it's a certain thing. 00:48:38:08 - 00:49:02:16 Speaker 1 And I always related a lot to the adult children of alcoholics. But for me that as an identity was totally insufficient, even if I wanted to be identified with a problem that was about my mom, that was about her. And like, really, my dignity and fullness as a human being was entirely intact without her. And the problems I was having had to do with the fears and resentments I have. 00:49:02:17 - 00:49:08:06 Speaker 1 And it's not that they wouldn't acknowledge that there, but it's considered an outside issue to talk. Yeah. 00:49:08:07 - 00:49:31:16 Speaker 2 So you're articulating something that I think is is really important to the kind of modern culture we've evolved into. Yeah. And you see this online as people identify with a diagnosis, it becomes then it overwhelms them in their consciousness, and they tend to filter the entire world through that lens. And what I'm hearing from you is, I think, a sense of middle path or balance. 00:49:31:18 - 00:49:58:09 Speaker 2 What you seem to be saying is you've identified, you've found this, these patterns of behavior that seem to fit you and others too, because I mean, just the following of crappy childhood fairy is a reflection of, you know what? If you grow up in these adverse environments with consistent trauma, can't get out of that unscathed, right? Like it's going to affect you in the way you interact with people, the relationships you develop. 00:49:58:09 - 00:50:25:23 Speaker 2 But then you're also saying, well, this doesn't define me. For our audience who might be hearing this for the first time. There's somewhat of a controversy around this term. CPSC in one respect, the and everyone knows that I reject labels. The Diagnostic Statistical Manual never accepted this to be any valid condition. Yet the World Health Organization identifies it and it's an ICD code. 00:50:26:01 - 00:50:30:23 Speaker 2 Let's talk about CPTSD and what it means to to to you. 00:50:31:00 - 00:50:57:02 Speaker 1 I literally feel my heart start beating fast when we talk about talking about it, because the state of California has tried to destroy my livelihood and my life's work for even saying the word, and but I happen to be an American citizen, and we have free speech. And I would like to say the word it's a concept, you know, it's a concept. 00:50:57:04 - 00:51:16:08 Speaker 1 Im not a clinical person. So what what does a diagnosis mean? I don't know, I don't diagnose, I kind of self-diagnosed. A therapist said, I think you're right. So that's kind of like see a therapist agreed. That's what you have. But what is it? I've noticed there's a lot of variation in the way people define it or understand it. 00:51:16:10 - 00:51:39:10 Speaker 1 I'm not that concerned with what the diagnosis is. I like, you know, I'll tell you something else I quibble about is when they say heal trauma. Trauma is what happened to me. You can't do shit about that. It's done. It happened. What you can heal is the effects of it. The patterns of behavior and feeling and thinking that seem pretty common for people like me. 00:51:39:10 - 00:52:00:08 Speaker 1 It was so helpful to know it was a common pattern, that I wasn't just like crazy girl who inexplicably gets very like, flustered and can't use her hands and then starts crying at the wrong time. I just thought that was like a personal failure, but it's so normal and there's a scientific explanation. I think I tend to be very iconoclastic. 00:52:00:09 - 00:52:30:03 Speaker 1 I've always thought these things. We always think now we know. Now we have the answer about this thing, and we were wrong ten years ago or a hundred years ago. But we're always wrong a little bit. We're sort of feeling our way through. There's something to this. There's a pattern in the way it affects people. The revelation to me was that the effects of what happened, like they knew they've known all my life, like people who lived through abuse and neglect like I did, were prone to depression, anxiety, addictions, rough relationships. 00:52:30:03 - 00:52:48:15 Speaker 1 I think that was common knowledge. What they didn't know is stuff that started to come out through things like the Ace study, that there's a high correlation with health problems for people who went through a lot. And I learned about that, and I was like, well, that's why I have all these autoimmune diseases. That's why I have asthma and migraines. 00:52:48:15 - 00:53:08:22 Speaker 1 I had sort of classic trauma pattern physical manifestations. And interestingly, when I started getting my fears and resentments on paper and meditating, they lifted. And I still have some you could probably see on my hands, I have that a light go, that's an autoimmune thing. I don't worry about it. Which is easy to say when you're light skinned already like me. 00:53:08:22 - 00:53:28:18 Speaker 1 It's not. It's not like very noticeable. But but I have some other ones too. And those, you know, I have read the statistics that the more trauma people had as a kid, the higher the risk. Not the not the certainty, but the risk of autoimmune disorders. There's a mechanism there. I got really curious about it. I did a lot of reading. 00:53:28:18 - 00:53:44:04 Speaker 1 I was really involved in it. And because I worked in healthcare, I had access to people who were experts in it. And I was just I was just soaking it up like, what is the real thing going on? Because all this time acting like it was about my feelings and memories and stuff, it had never really hit the spot. 00:53:44:08 - 00:54:09:17 Speaker 1 There's feelings, there's memories. But I was to find out the physiological component was it was it was like a key unlocking, like, okay, that's why I used to like if somebody didn't. Okay, so there was this boyfriend and he would go out late and then he would come home even later. And not when he said he would come home. 00:54:09:17 - 00:54:36:00 Speaker 1 And I would think I would start to get like, where is he? Is he cheating on me? He was FYI, you know, he was, but where is he? And there was this moment when all of a sudden and I would be like, when he walks in, I can't be mad. I don't want to make a scene. I don't want him to know that I was freaking out 1:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the morning, and then I would feel this thing go down my arms this cold, like cold blood running through my arms. 00:54:36:01 - 00:55:04:12 Speaker 1 I'd be like, oh, no, no turning back now. And whenever he came in the door, I was going to rage at him. Like there was like this incredible Hulk moment that I could feel coming. And it would be like, oh no, oh no, oh no, here it is. And that was explained to me in the literature of a physiological reaction connected to a stressful experience of a release of hormones and emotional dysregulation getting unleashed. 00:55:04:14 - 00:55:12:14 Speaker 1 Oh my God. I was like, that's what that is. I'm not a bad person. I'm really injured. I'm just really injured. 00:55:12:16 - 00:55:39:11 Speaker 2 I'm sure you've heard other labels in the field. Borderline personality disorder is being one of them. The reputation around that word is very dehumanizing. And without getting into the history of it, you know, around psychoanalytic responses, trauma victims and, you know, kind of Freudian viewpoints of this. Was that label ever thrown at you by these therapists? 00:55:39:12 - 00:55:42:01 Speaker 1 Not verbally, but I wonder if they were thinking it. 00:55:42:01 - 00:55:42:18 Speaker 5 Yeah. 00:55:42:20 - 00:55:43:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. 00:55:43:11 - 00:56:12:09 Speaker 2 I do want to just, you know, reflect on what that means to the people out there. It's got a it's got a horrible rap. A lot of therapists will refuse to take the case. They'll call people borderlines. And basically what it means is chronic emotion dysregulation. And in response to perceived threat or abandonment, often have very similar reactions when they're when they're connecting or they're attaching to another person. 00:56:12:09 - 00:56:36:22 Speaker 2 And that dysregulation comes out in exactly what you have said. And because of that chronic emotion dysregulation, they find ways to try to make themselves feel better. And that can be done through drugs or alcohol or even self-injury. And in relationships they tend to be somewhat emotionally volatile. Right? I love you, I hate you, as is the term. 00:56:37:03 - 00:57:12:02 Speaker 2 So on its surface, when you use these labels and you and you medicalized everything in our culture and you identify with something like that, the viewpoint that's out there is almost like that's an incurable condition, right? It's a personality. And personalities are not that flexible and they're not open to modification. You're switching it on this conversation. I'm so glad that you are, because what you're recognizing is these things may be very normal and expected reactions based on the environment you grew up in. 00:57:12:02 - 00:57:36:20 Speaker 2 When your life is volatile, you almost have to develop this thick skin and protective factor of where is the next harm going to come? Yeah, right. It feels like when you if you've ever fostered like dogs, like for the dog lovers out there, like they take an animal out of an abusive and dangerous environment and you bring them into a safe environment. 00:57:36:21 - 00:58:05:15 Speaker 2 They don't know the difference, right? They're not able to say, oh, this isn't like my previous home. And they're wounded animals and they find their places to just kind of retreat. And I say, I can be safe here, but I'm against a wall. My eyes are wide open. I'm going to see where I could be attacked. And even if you approach in love, you're still defensive and your nervous system is activated in fight or flight because there's been so much fight. 00:58:05:16 - 00:58:07:07 Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. 00:58:07:08 - 00:58:27:12 Speaker 1 And you wouldn't say the dog is just trying to get attention, or the dog really needs to pull itself together. That's. I've looked dogs have taught me this as well where I've seen them just quiver and pee on the floor because you're saying hello. And that gave me great compassion for all of us. Just like, oh, it's an injury. 00:58:27:12 - 00:58:58:09 Speaker 1 It's an injury. It's not a decision. It's not, you know, it's an emotional acting out. It's a there's an injury to how you're processing your experience. And so that's why it was such a revelation to me to hear the word complex PTSD, just to find out it's a thing. And finding out about it came at just the right moment, because I had I had five weeks before my wedding to my husband, I had flipped out on him, gotten very emotionally dysregulation dysregulated, and raged at him about something immediately afterwards. 00:58:58:09 - 00:59:02:18 Speaker 1 I was so sorry. I was like, I'm sorry, but in the middle of that thing I was like, I, the wedding. 00:59:02:18 - 00:59:03:14 Speaker 5 Is off. I don't. 00:59:03:15 - 00:59:20:02 Speaker 1 I just like overreacted. And I was sorry, but he called me on and he's like, I'm not going to marry somebody like this. It was devastating to me. And he meant business. And he moved out and, you know, it was for real. It was devastating. Everybody had already bought their tickets, we had paid for everything, and it was all gone. 00:59:20:03 - 00:59:43:07 Speaker 1 And it was really sad to me. But it it's what got me searching online, like what is wrong with me? And that's when I found the first books I ever found about this. Books that are well known now. But I'd never heard of them. But I stumbled on The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and Cts-v From Surviving to Thriving. 00:59:43:13 - 01:00:09:19 Speaker 1 And I read them both and I found out it's a thing. And so as much as diagnosis can be a prison and a trap and a bad identity, like just to find out, like somebody recognizes there's an injury going on, it's not just your personality. And it was right then the minute I read it, I stood up and I was just like shouting with joy going, telling my, my, my, my now husband he was over. 01:00:09:20 - 01:00:31:09 Speaker 1 I'm like, I found out what it is, I found out what it is. And he was very skeptical at first because why wouldn't he be? Oh, you read a book and now everything's going to be okay. But that was like turning point number two. 20 years after learning my daily practice and learning how to regulate. But thinking that what I, I it's so much more than regulating. 01:00:31:09 - 01:00:52:07 Speaker 1 But it did. The daily practice did help me get regulated. But because I had no idea what am I addressing right now or what am I doing it? It was slippery, I don't know. Philosophically, I was often just like all by myself figuring things out. I just knew that I was different from whatever the paradigm of psychology and therapy. 01:00:52:07 - 01:01:26:15 Speaker 1 I was different than that. Like, it just didn't speak to the things I was figuring out about myself. When they started talking about trauma, there was some connection there, but nonetheless, I still to this day, if you have me talk about trauma, it'll still do the same thing. To me, it's a brain pathway. Writing about it is a whole different pathway, and it can be a safe pathway for somebody like me to say what I need to say about the past, and I can read what I wrote to other people on my YouTube channel when it's when it's a sensitive topic for me, I write it and I read it off a teleprompter. 01:01:26:15 - 01:01:49:01 Speaker 1 I can tell you anything that way, but if I talk about it, it will start to, you know, tighten me up. It's hard for me to stay present, and it's not a voluntary reaction, and it's not because anything's wrong with me. It's just how it works. It's just how it works and I know what to do. And so by doing that, when I did start to share with people about there's a word for this thing. 01:01:49:01 - 01:02:13:14 Speaker 1 It's not just your parents alcoholism. There's a word for this thing. I really related to it. People were flocking to me like nobody had ever heard this before. And so I had this living room full of crying people. So I very quickly decided to adopt some of the same structures as a there are certain 12 step structures, which is we don't talk about politics, religion, we don't talk about our professions. 01:02:13:14 - 01:02:28:05 Speaker 1 We don't. But I made up some new rules for my living room. We don't talk about trauma. We're not here to talk about what happened. We're here to learn about like, what are we doing about it? And that was a radical thing. Like, you're not supposed to say that. It really puts some people off and they quit, right? 01:02:28:05 - 01:02:44:04 Speaker 1 Then they like, I get to, you know, but I'm not qualified to deal with a room full of people talking about their sexual abuse. That was quite alarming to me and threatening. I didn't want to do that. And what I had left was a small cadre of people who were like, show me what to do, what? How does this technique work? 01:02:44:05 - 01:03:01:16 Speaker 1 And I started plugging in the the writing and meditation. Now that we know this is a thing, see, and they all said, yeah, yeah, I get dysregulated. I totally know what that is now that there's a word for it. We'll see if it gets better when you do this. So for many people, it did. Some who knows they just didn't like it or didn't do it. 01:03:01:16 - 01:03:22:08 Speaker 1 But I just continued to work with people who wanted my help and it became too many people. It was 20 at a time, and back then I used to take phone calls from everybody, and I was a mom and I had a business and I couldn't keep doing it. So in 2016, I took a seminar on how would you talk about your life publicly like this? 01:03:22:08 - 01:03:43:08 Speaker 1 And I something that was talked about at that seminar is how will you deal with hate mail? How will you deal with your family's privacy, that sort of thing. So I just got a little help with that, and I, I did what had been in my heart ever since the day I learned these techniques, which was I mean, I just had such a desire to share it with the world. 01:03:43:10 - 01:03:58:11 Speaker 1 It was just the Heidi in me, you know, I just I just wanted to share this thing that had helped me and I was always doing it. So I put it. I made a little cheapo website with it, but then people were like, I don't understand, I don't understand. So I said, let me make a video, I'll talk you through it. 01:03:58:11 - 01:04:00:09 Speaker 1 I'll show you the writing. 01:04:00:11 - 01:04:23:23 Speaker 2 So, it starts with this desire that's in your heart to help others, which I, you know, my experience in life is the happiest. People are the ones that are not focusing on themselves. Yeah, it is in the service of other people. If I had to say what is mental health therapy? It's not incessantly talking about everything that is wrong and where you were damaged in your life. 01:04:24:00 - 01:04:49:15 Speaker 2 It's actually talking about your life. You know that now is the most important. And who are you and why you here, and why is this meaningful? And I just see the joys that exist when someone is not in their head, but engaging in the service of other people. And there's something about that that, you know, it's funny that you use the term radical because it's not radical to me at all. 01:04:49:15 - 01:05:00:03 Speaker 2 It feels like common sense. It feels like that's who we've been as human beings outside of this, like very unique over medicalized therapy period in our lives. 01:05:00:05 - 01:05:01:03 Speaker 5 I mean. 01:05:01:05 - 01:05:23:06 Speaker 4 For the majority of human history, anyone who would find something like this that that helped help them would of course want to share it with others. Yeah. And this wouldn't have been something you went to a professional for because I didn't exist. So this what you were doing would have been considered completely normal, right? To go to your friend or a village elder for help. 01:05:23:07 - 01:05:38:12 Speaker 4 But what you're facing now, you have this large YouTube following. You do these seminars where you help people learn this technique that Rachel taught you and when you were God's taxi, which I love. I love that you were God's taxi. And God was like, hey, I got. 01:05:38:12 - 01:05:40:05 Speaker 5 Something for you. 01:05:40:07 - 01:05:55:23 Speaker 4 But now the state of California is trying to tell you, you can't teach this to people anymore. You can't. You people cannot choose to come to you and pay money for you to help them learn this. 01:05:56:03 - 01:06:16:01 Speaker 1 I'll tell you something specific. I've always taught this for free. I never charge money for this. Actually, technically, I charge $9 to come to a call with me, but the course is free. I only charge a pittance because I need to get a terms of service. Now that the state is harassing me about it, I need a Terms of service to prove that I told you it's not therapy and that if you're really troubled, you should see a therapist. 01:06:16:01 - 01:06:24:14 Speaker 1 So I started charging $9, and I think as soon as I feel safe to do so, I'm taking that off. It's always been something I'm on or bound to share for free as it was shared with me. 01:06:24:16 - 01:06:37:02 Speaker 4 But otherwise, you're sharing just your own life experiences with people who want to come to you and and hear about you know, who see your channel and want to to learn about. What have you learned about how to make your life better? 01:06:37:03 - 01:06:37:18 Speaker 5 Yeah. 01:06:37:20 - 01:06:42:21 Speaker 4 What is the state of California have to say about this? Well, and what happened? 01:06:42:23 - 01:07:06:06 Speaker 1 First, let me explain that in addition to the technique that I teach, which I consider like the foundation, if you're like me, you can't learn anything until you can calm yourself, until you and open your channel. I can say this to you on a scientific level. Writing and meditating helps to calm and regulate your nervous system, and it probably will help so people use that. 01:07:06:07 - 01:07:29:10 Speaker 1 Then we can talk about things. So what's the problem? And so people, people, all people have problems. And people who grew up with trauma have an extra burden of them. And they follow a certain pattern difficulty with people, money, jobs, living situations, something I call crap fitting, fitting yourself to unacceptable people in situations because you feel like you have to. 01:07:29:12 - 01:07:59:15 Speaker 1 There's just common patterns. And I've made 1500 videos and courses and things. So I put out there. Here's my experience. Then in the comments, people say I have that too. Or they say it's not like that. It's like this. So they've been educating me about like what's common. And I talk about those things in videos. So then it became it went from I had a website and a YouTube channel to now it's like so many people, it was 2000 people. 01:07:59:16 - 01:08:21:13 Speaker 1 First, you know, there was like a a few people, 2000 people. And then the the lockdown came on March 16th, 2020. At the time, my the way that I made a living was I had a video production company and all of that stopped because we were on that was on location and it was not possible to work. So I said, well, I guess I'll just keep making videos and blog posts. 01:08:21:13 - 01:08:43:11 Speaker 1 So I did more of them and boom, it just took off. It was, it was it was a time when people really needed what I was saying. And it was a time when I had time to say what I was saying. And what I was saying was such a learning curve of experiencing it, talking to people, reading what they were saying about it. 01:08:43:12 - 01:09:01:00 Speaker 1 And I started having zoom calls. I used to do them occasionally, but once everybody was locked down, I started having them often as a way to be of service, to have a community for people to go to. And so I would lead these calls where we would I would teach them how to write and meditate. I'd ask them, you take the free course if you can. 01:09:01:02 - 01:09:21:15 Speaker 1 We'd right and meditate and then we would. I'd take questions for a total of hour and a half, two hours. And it was just wonderful. And it still is. I still this is the happiest thing I do. Everybody does it together. It gives me joy that people put in the chat that they're they're zooming in from all these different countries all over the world. 01:09:21:17 - 01:09:37:18 Speaker 1 And most people don't say anything, but when they're when they ask questions, they come up and they ask me a question. And sometimes it's a question I can't answer. And I'm like, sorry, I'm not a brain scientist or sorry I'm not a psychologist. I don't really know. I know one thing I read about is this you might want to go check that out. 01:09:37:18 - 01:09:48:13 Speaker 1 So I give answers like that, but if you want to know, they'd be like, my ex is coming over to the day to get his stuff. What can I do to not flip out on him? I'm your man. 01:09:48:15 - 01:09:49:16 Speaker 5 You know. 01:09:49:18 - 01:10:03:11 Speaker 1 I know what to do. I know what to do. And I go, well, here, this is what I would suggest to you. And it's just it's a great joy. And everybody learning together and quietly. My, my channel's very countercultural. 01:10:03:12 - 01:10:06:09 Speaker 4 It sounds almost like you are a, 01:10:06:11 - 01:10:22:20 Speaker 4 zoom version of a Dear Abby where people are coming to you with life. You know, life questions, and you're giving them honest, sometimes humorous but helpful takes that they can go and use in their lives. Would that does that feel right to you? 01:10:23:00 - 01:10:53:21 Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a big piece of what I do is answer questions and then I teach I just teach directly some concepts I have. And what I'm teaching is for some people, very countercultural. So here's an example of something I teach. We've been talking about like romantic relationships and that being a fraught area. Well, I've noticed in my experience, I was able to completely transform the character of my relationships and marry a good guy and have a solid relationship. 01:10:53:21 - 01:11:34:05 Speaker 1 When I changed my tactic and I got some mentoring from friends on that, and I teach what they taught me, and it had to do with adopting values that were more like my great grandmother had. Which as you go slowly, you get to know somebody. This is courtship dating. The purpose of dating is to get to know somebody, not to, you know, immediately rush into in measurement with them and retroactively try to make them into the person you hoped they were, which would have been my old model, you know, and so contemporary culture, certainly in the Bay area, it's considered rude or crazy or right wing or something to tell people go slowly, don't have 01:11:34:05 - 01:11:50:22 Speaker 1 sex right away. I just said it and I would get pushback from people and I would be like, fine, just don't watch the channel. So many people were so hungry to hear some advice. So how would I do that? How would I date? Slowly, I'm like, okay, this is how I did it. And there's very practical things you can do. 01:11:50:23 - 01:12:08:15 Speaker 1 You focus on, you know, holding back from trying to chase somebody and just letting information come to you. You can let them know you're interested, but you let information come to you and then you don't see them more than once a week at first, and you don't stay on the phone more than half an hour at first. And very practical things. 01:12:08:18 - 01:12:10:06 Speaker 1 So what. 01:12:10:08 - 01:12:18:01 Speaker 4 What happened that led to the state of California deciding to crack down on you? 01:12:18:03 - 01:12:48:10 Speaker 1 Well, I think the first thing that happened is it became hugely popular. You know, there's over a million subscribers right now. So people start to hear about you. A lot of people who came to me, I teach courses. I was doing coaching group coaching programs and live workshops and things. I do most of those things that I'm not prohibited right now from doing, but people, it's a little bit like today if you're on YouTube. 01:12:48:10 - 01:13:13:19 Speaker 1 For some people, it's a little bit like being a television personality or something. Like 40% of what people watch on their physical TVs is YouTube these days. And so it is like you're somebody from TV and people hear about you. And a lot of therapists were hearing about me, and about 15% of my audience and about the same proportion of my paid students are therapists and doctors and clinical professionals. 01:13:13:19 - 01:13:31:18 Speaker 1 And the number one reason they're there is for themselves. They find these practical lessons very helpful, that's all. And those professionals, as well as some others who don't use it for themselves, they refer people to me. So a lot of people who would have come to me for coaching were referred by their therapist. They're just like, I like this person. 01:13:31:18 - 01:13:51:01 Speaker 1 She's telling you how to deal with this thing. Or many of them were saying, watch these videos between visits. And so that's a large part of my audience is kind of like quietly in tandem with the professional world, like, I'm, I'm your peer who's telling you how to do the day to day stuff. They're working with you on these other principles. 01:13:51:05 - 01:14:13:01 Speaker 1 It's not in competition. I mean, anybody can recognize that we need all kinds of people in this. It's a you know, a lot of people are suffering and struggling. For me, if I was taking on somebody paid, I have all these caveats, like if you have serious mental health struggles, I can't really take you because you know, that I that's just not something I'm trained or equipped to handle. 01:14:13:01 - 01:14:24:21 Speaker 1 I'm happy to be here and come to my public calls, watch my videos. But like, I can't be your coach because I feel like I don't understand the thing. I only work with people who I feel like I understand. 01:14:24:22 - 01:14:28:06 Speaker 2 I do, I do think we have to hone in on the the specific accusations. 01:14:28:06 - 01:14:30:22 Speaker 4 Yeah. All right. I want to know what what that was. 01:14:30:23 - 01:14:34:11 Speaker 1 Well, why it happened, though the context is it's because I was known. 01:14:34:15 - 01:14:35:21 Speaker 2 What happened. 01:14:35:23 - 01:14:54:08 Speaker 1 So I got a letter. I got a letter two years ago, a certified letter. And I didn't even think it was real. And they said, you're practicing psychology without a license. Cease and desist and pay us $2,500. I thought, boy, this is the just another phishing scam. 01:14:54:10 - 01:14:57:01 Speaker 2 Who made this accusation? Who did it come from? 01:14:57:03 - 01:14:59:04 Speaker 4 It turns out well, actually. 01:14:59:04 - 01:15:16:10 Speaker 1 The first the first letter was from the Department of Consumer Affairs and just said, we've had a complaint about you. Can you talk to us about this? And I was like, of course. And naively I thought I had to, I didn't they gave me the impression I had to. They said, you can either come to Sacramento or we come to you. 01:15:16:10 - 01:15:20:14 Speaker 1 And I said, well, come to me. I'm pretty busy, but come to me, you can see my house. 01:15:20:15 - 01:15:25:11 Speaker 4 Was there anything in the letter stating that you did not have to cooperate with that? 01:15:25:12 - 01:15:38:20 Speaker 1 It was not clear to me. I just found out the other day and haven't even looked at the letter to be like my lawyer now said, you know, you didn't have to do that. And I was like, what? He goes, yeah, you really put your foot in it by cooperating. 01:15:38:20 - 01:16:14:05 Speaker 2 These are really important points. Because as we enter into this segment of the conversation, we have to talk about where government can overstep and overreach into the private lives of the individual, where they do not have that jurisdiction, where it could potentially violate your constitutionally protected rights. So just to tie this together first, before we move on some facts about this case, it is the Department of Consumer Affairs, but it's a state board of psychology in the state of California. 01:16:14:06 - 01:16:20:06 Speaker 1 The next step was them. It escalated to that. It escalated down to that specific department. 01:16:20:07 - 01:16:43:19 Speaker 2 So a complaint goes in to that department. And then the specific complaint is that you are practicing psychology without a license. So it is under their purview. Right. They regulate that profession and they've made it a misdemeanor crime. If you practice psychology without a license. 01:16:43:20 - 01:16:46:20 Speaker 1 Is it just a misdemeanor because that's punishable with prison? 01:16:46:21 - 01:16:50:03 Speaker 2 It's a it's actually yeah. We did some of our investigations. 01:16:50:07 - 01:16:51:00 Speaker 4 Yeah we did. 01:16:51:01 - 01:17:03:18 Speaker 2 It is a misdemeanor. If you comply you're not going to be facing prison. I think the next steps and Tracy with your legal background could probably describe where it becomes a slippery slope. 01:17:03:19 - 01:17:26:22 Speaker 4 So they that department has no no enforcement power other than issue you assign. The next step is I understand it is they would have to take it to the judicial court and or to the AG and try to get them to agree to enforce it against you. And at that point, they could decide whether to take an enforcement action, and they can. 01:17:27:01 - 01:17:31:14 Speaker 4 So they could subpoena you. They could. 01:17:31:16 - 01:17:49:07 Speaker 4 Cite you, they can issue fines against you. They can, which is abatement, I believe. But the to asking, telling you you must stop. But to get any kind of enforcement against you, they have to go. They have to go to the court system. And once they get to the court system, then the court can order you to stop. 01:17:49:07 - 01:17:52:06 Speaker 4 And if you don't stop, they can get contempt of court against you. 01:17:52:08 - 01:17:53:01 Speaker 2 Now. 01:17:53:02 - 01:18:15:22 Speaker 4 I've actually dealt with cases like this in Pennsylvania with a veterinary medical board, and we can get into that a little later after we talk more about your case. But I've helped and worked with people who are facing an almost identical situation, who were being targeted for allegedly practicing veterinary medicine without a license. So somebody complains about about you. 01:18:15:23 - 01:18:17:13 Speaker 4 What do you know now, what that complaint. 01:18:17:13 - 01:18:37:07 Speaker 1 Might do? I finally found out just last October, and it was somebody who lives in Maine, had come to one of my free calls. She was confused. She wasn't really sure what it was or what it was part of, but she knows that she felt triggered and she thought I was mean and she felt triggered. That is the complaint, she said. 01:18:37:08 - 01:18:51:13 Speaker 1 She said, I bet people are probably killing themselves because of her, and that's all it was. And they are obliged to follow up in research. If somebody files a complaint, anybody can go to the website. I don't I hate to tell you anybody. 01:18:51:16 - 01:18:53:01 Speaker 2 You're not gonna have to be in your state. 01:18:53:02 - 01:19:11:11 Speaker 1 Yeah. Anybody can just go fill out this online form and they're obliged to look into it. And what they ended up doing against me clearly has nothing to do with somebody being triggered. It's just that I got onto their radar screen. They happened to be going after a lot of license people as well for similar, you know, accusations. 01:19:11:11 - 01:19:18:08 Speaker 1 So they say it's about the license, but it seems what everybody has in common is they have a large following. That's what I've noticed. 01:19:18:10 - 01:19:27:19 Speaker 2 So I think it's important for us to to read the statute here. And what defines the practice of psychology in your state, the state of Pennsylvania? 01:19:27:20 - 01:19:28:10 Speaker 1 California. 01:19:28:14 - 01:19:57:09 Speaker 2 I'm sorry? California. We're in Pennsylvania. And I think we can talk about this being a slippery slope in so many different directions. But here is the actual statute. It's actually code 2903. No person may engage in the practice of psychology or represent themselves as a psychologist without a license. So we know very clearly you're not representing yourself as a psychologist nor any mental health professional. 01:19:57:11 - 01:20:05:09 Speaker 2 In fact, you're very clear about the differences. And you yourself as experienced mental health care. So it's. 01:20:05:10 - 01:20:09:15 Speaker 1 And I put disclaimers on literally every piece of content I issue. 01:20:09:17 - 01:20:40:20 Speaker 2 So then since we know you're not representing yourself as a psychologist, it only then is this other area the practice of psychology. So this is important. And people listen closely because this is how they define psychology in the state of California, rendering or offering to render any psychological service applying to one psychological principles. They don't define this methods. 01:20:41:00 - 01:20:43:21 Speaker 4 Definition right there already. Yes. First sentence. 01:20:43:23 - 01:21:10:04 Speaker 2 Methods and procedures of understanding. What the hell does that mean? I'm a psychologist sitting here and I have no idea what they're talking about. And I'm actually really interested to know about the psychological principles they refer to, because there's a lot of these things sound like, you know, the act of being human. So that's important. Practicing and influencing behavior. 01:21:10:06 - 01:21:17:09 Speaker 2 So we do this quite frequently, right? A coach, a parent. 01:21:17:11 - 01:21:23:01 Speaker 4 A meditation teacher trying to help you learn to calm down. 01:21:23:03 - 01:21:38:08 Speaker 2 All of these are designed to influence or modify behavior. Okay. So let's go on including principles pertaining to learning. Now we're entering it to the role of teachers. 01:21:38:10 - 01:22:33:15 Speaker 2 Perception motivation. Now what's under their purview is anything that is trying to influence someone's motivation. So that would include the A world. Again back to coaches. When I talk about sports coaches right. Or any action like you're just trying to motivate another human being because you care about them emotions and interpersonal relationships. So again, anytime a neighbor or a friend could provide advice and try to encourage one to get out of a relationship, according to the state of California, you are practicing psychology and methods including interviewing, counseling, psychotherapy, behavior modification, broad and hypnosis expressly includes assessment, diagnosis, prevention. 01:22:33:17 - 01:23:07:21 Speaker 2 Anytime they try to prevent someone from engaging in a harmful behavior now is under their purview. Treatment and intervention. Intervention is anything that you add to try to help somebody that's broad to increase. Pause for it. Effective functioning. Now they also have a statutory definition of psychotherapy using psychological methods in a professional relationship to help a person acquire greater human effectiveness. 01:23:08:01 - 01:23:49:17 Speaker 2 So that now encompasses any professional relationship mentor, coach, teacher. This is the broad nature of these ideologues where they believe they have jurisdiction and control in your state, that they can somehow legislate and enforce fines, citations, or even law misdemeanor, that if you act in any way to help another human being, and in fact, they use words that are so nebulous and so broad, anything that tries to influence greater human effectiveness, which is not a clinical term, and a psychologist, a clinical psychologist. 01:23:49:17 - 01:24:14:13 Speaker 2 And what stands out to me is that it's so broad, it encompasses every aspect of the human experience is now under their jurisdiction. Yeah. I'm trying not to get furious about such things. Right. Trying to become a better person and to try to talk about these things with reason and love. But there's an anger that rises in front of me for two reasons. 01:24:14:14 - 01:24:42:22 Speaker 2 Right? One is I've been behind the curtain of this entire field, and we met at ICI conference, and I remember saying on stage that I would rather interact with the crappy childhood fairy than my profession. That wasn't trying to be hyperbolic. What I meant by that is, over decades of interviewing clinicians, they became robots, automatons. They were repeating narratives that were not supported by anything I understood to be about the human condition. 01:24:43:01 - 01:25:14:06 Speaker 2 They were just repeating what sounded like capture, right? They had to talk about things with sometimes this Marxist kind of perspective that human beings are victims of some oppressed state. Right. And they were creating this division and victim narrative. More importantly, is they fragile to all human beings? And what that did is it almost created this dependance on a therapist, which they became weirdly aligned with the medical profession. 01:25:14:06 - 01:25:39:22 Speaker 2 So diagnosis to them meant the same as like a medical condition. They saw psychotherapy or intervention as treatment. Again, another medicalized world. And there was this hierarchy that was created and developed where they, the person in this position of power and authority were to instill a worldview on the particular client. And that's why I thought this was particularly dangerous. 01:25:40:00 - 01:26:06:23 Speaker 2 Refreshing was a real human being who had real life experience, who had gone through real events in her life, had gone through this system. It did not help her, but yet she was open about what did help me and then desire to serve another human being. Right. And there was, what I enjoyed about listening to to her is that she didn't have the therapy speak. 01:26:07:01 - 01:26:34:14 Speaker 2 She didn't have the the words that were approved by her education and her supervision. She was just a real human being. And I think people are actually craving this authenticity. I came up with this term radically genuine, and that was a term actually used for the highest level of validation. Just be a human being with somebody and move away from this pathology and medicalization. 01:26:34:14 - 01:27:04:10 Speaker 2 And let's get back to trying to be real support and help someone. So the fact that the, that the state of California would target something that I believe enhances human beings, like more connection, more open dialog, more options to learn from each other, that they believe that they can come in and shut that down and stop your right to make a living. 01:27:04:12 - 01:27:08:18 Speaker 2 But you brought up even a better point this morning when we were talking. 01:27:08:20 - 01:27:38:23 Speaker 4 Well, what what I don't get what makes no sense to me is the idea that a 25 year old who has been through a program but had effectively no life experience, would be more qualified to speak to someone than somebody who's 60 has really been through. It, has had tremendous life experience, learned from it, and now is able to to speak to others and say, look, I've been there. 01:27:39:01 - 01:28:09:12 Speaker 4 I'm not telling you what works for you. But here's what's helped me. The idea that that 25 year old who has a license would be able to to speak to that, but you couldn't just from a purely common sense perspective, it makes no sense to me. None. And for most of human history, that's not how this worked. We mostly lived in villages, and when you had a challenge, you went to your friends or you went to your elders. 01:28:09:12 - 01:28:27:04 Speaker 4 There wasn't a, you know, a village licensed therapist, and they certainly weren't 25 that you would go to in these situations. And I don't in any way mean to imply that nobody in that in that profession could help. I just don't think there should be a monopoly. 01:28:27:06 - 01:28:50:09 Speaker 1 There it is. It's if you really think it through, what would it look like if. Well, I'll tell you. In the terrible two day hearing, they put me through, their expert witness literally said it would be better if people had no help, if it couldn't be from a licensed professional, because my lawyer was trying to say so you're saying can people not heal themselves? 01:28:50:09 - 01:29:11:13 Speaker 1 So she couldn't teach them things that she did to heal. And he said, well, that's not safe. And he said, so it would be better to have no help. And he said, yes, it would be better for them to have no help if it can't be from a licensed therapist. So think it through like think that through to the extent so nobody can help each other unless it's through a licensed therapist. 01:29:11:14 - 01:29:15:08 Speaker 1 Like how would that work? Even as things are, you can't get a therapist. 01:29:15:12 - 01:29:39:16 Speaker 2 That sounds absolutely delusional. Yeah. And completely narcissistic. Yeah, right. And if anyone is acting outside of their boundary of competence, it would be somebody who makes that statement. Yeah, right. Think about you'd have to deny all of human history and cooperation and connectedness and attachment and love and all the things that bond human beings together in a very natural way. 01:29:39:19 - 01:29:53:18 Speaker 2 Somebody says, because I'm a professional or I'm a pseudo expert, I am the one who is the arbiter of what help is. And if you don't receive it from me, then they're better off not receiving any. 01:29:53:20 - 01:29:55:07 Speaker 1 Yeah. 01:29:55:09 - 01:29:56:15 Speaker 4 That's very telling. 01:29:56:17 - 01:29:57:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. 01:29:58:00 - 01:30:09:20 Speaker 4 So as things stand right now. They ordered you to cease providing paid coaching. Is that correct? 01:30:09:22 - 01:30:28:02 Speaker 1 One of the hard things about it is they've been utterly unclear what it is I'm not to do. And when they started out, they wanted me to stop everything. And in the course of the hearings, I think they cottoned on about the First Amendment applying to much of my work, for sure, like YouTube is free speech, books are free speech. 01:30:28:02 - 01:30:53:05 Speaker 1 They didn't know I had books. Eventually, through the process, they figured out that I had coaching programs. Now, the fact of the matter is, I had a team that would coach people. I was always busy running the company, but the cases against me personally, and I insist I do have the right to talk to people. And from time to time I have taken I do coaching for money, which I must. 01:30:53:05 - 01:31:13:05 Speaker 1 That's called eating and, you know, having making a living. So while most of my work is done for free, the majority of my week is spent producing free content. I also support my family through paid work, which would be more of like my group coaching programs, and that I used to do. And coaching is a very broad word. 01:31:13:07 - 01:31:41:07 Speaker 1 Coaching. I acknowledge who knows what people do as coaches. It could be all kinds of wacky do stuff, but I'm not responsible for that. And because coaching is legal and California has no guidelines on it, I, I did my best to figure out an ethical process of working and making sure that I was doing everything I could. I went and consulted one of the best trauma experts in the world to say, if somebody ever told me they felt suicidal, what should I do? 01:31:41:08 - 01:31:59:09 Speaker 1 I got, I got coached by him on how to handle that. I did my due diligence. How can I do this safely? How can I have contracts that help make it very clear? And the answer was have the contract and talk people through it. Make sure they have a chance to talk through what it says. This is not therapy. 01:31:59:09 - 01:32:20:13 Speaker 1 I'm not a therapist. If you're struggling, it is important to me that you get help and I may remove you from my program so that you don't have the impression that I'm your helper with something this dire and it's this delicate walk. Right? But what can I do? I did the very best I could do, and there were never any complaints except for somebody getting triggered in a free call. 01:32:20:13 - 01:32:22:18 Speaker 1 It was. So. Yeah. 01:32:22:19 - 01:32:29:05 Speaker 4 The state of California has told you to stop, but they haven't told you what you were doing. They said that you had to stop. 01:32:29:06 - 01:32:36:20 Speaker 1 They said, stop practicing psychology. Stop claiming that you treat CPT and stop making treatment plans. 01:32:36:20 - 01:32:38:07 Speaker 4 And you make treatment. 01:32:38:09 - 01:32:39:11 Speaker 1 Of course not. 01:32:39:12 - 01:32:41:13 Speaker 2 Do you claim the treat? CPT. S.D.. 01:32:41:14 - 01:32:42:09 Speaker 1 No. 01:32:42:11 - 01:32:44:05 Speaker 4 Have you ever said you're a psychologist? 01:32:44:06 - 01:32:44:17 Speaker 1 No. 01:32:44:18 - 01:32:47:00 Speaker 4 I ever said you do therapy. 01:32:47:01 - 01:33:09:16 Speaker 1 Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And also, they also have accused me of claiming I can cure PTSD. And I just make clear, I tell everybody it's not considered a curable thing. It's something that that, you know, I just I read the literature and I share literature with them. Here's what it says. It says that you can have better outcomes if you do this. 01:33:09:16 - 01:33:31:02 Speaker 1 I found dot, dot, dot. If I exercise every day, it's just very practical stuff. They know. And I know people are not confused about this, but they took this paternalistic attitude that I was dangerous. And they're the people who keep people safe. And I wasn't allowed to speak in my own hearing. I could answer questions, but I wasn't allowed to speak. 01:33:31:02 - 01:33:33:00 Speaker 1 But one of the things I would have. 01:33:33:01 - 01:33:35:13 Speaker 2 Can't defend yourself when you're being accused of something. 01:33:35:14 - 01:33:52:22 Speaker 1 In theory. I had a lawyer who was supposed to do it for me, but at the administrative court level, it's pretty hard to get a lawyer who even grasps the issues or is going to really do the homework and go to bat. So there were a lot of things I would have liked to have said that it didn't occur to him to say, and I want to. 01:33:52:23 - 01:33:57:02 Speaker 4 Pass here. I don't think most Americans know what the administrative court system. 01:33:57:03 - 01:33:57:22 Speaker 1 I didn't know. 01:33:57:23 - 01:34:21:17 Speaker 4 So under the Constitution, we have a right to trial by jury of our peers, do due process and trial by jury of our peers. And over the last 100 years, as the administrative state has risen, the administrative court system has slowly been usurping your right to the jury of your peers. They've been doing this in other ways to where judges are ruling. 01:34:21:19 - 01:34:41:09 Speaker 4 I believe the Constitution is very clear that you should have a right to a jury of your peers, but people don't know the degree to which the administrative court system is a kangaroo court. So it's worse than that front of a judge. You are in front of a person who is an administrative judge. They are not a real judge. 01:34:41:10 - 01:34:44:09 Speaker 4 They are a part of their associated with that governing body. 01:34:44:10 - 01:34:45:19 Speaker 1 He's from the AG's office. 01:34:45:19 - 01:35:11:04 Speaker 4 Correct. And but you do not have the rights you would have in standard court. You're in front of what is essentially a panel of people from the board that has made the accusation against you. There is no jury of people from your town sitting there who are going to rule on this. And people don't realize that the degree to which this if you are up against an agency, this is what you have to go through first. 01:35:11:05 - 01:35:32:04 Speaker 4 And you could say, okay, well, if they rule against you, you could then go on to you could go on to taking it to the, you know, the federal or the state court system as you have. But what people don't realize is this isn't a quick process. They make this ruling against you. The process is the punishment. They know this very well. 01:35:32:08 - 01:36:07:01 Speaker 4 Come after you. You have to spend tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars defending yourself. And then if they if they rule against you and they get an injunction against you, it could be years before the court says, whoops, actually, sorry. You're good. Keep going by that point. Most people's businesses will be dead and they know this. And this has used against doctors, nurses, lawyers all the time who step outside the boundaries of their, the accepted thought, the Overton Window for their career. 01:36:07:01 - 01:36:31:19 Speaker 4 And we saw this during Covid more than almost any other time. I have a dear friend, Meryl Nass. Now she's a doctor. She was a doctor in Maine, and during Covid she spoke out publicly and courageously, saying, look, I don't think masks work. We should be doing early treatment with the drugs that show efficacy, in that case, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine. 01:36:31:21 - 01:36:58:08 Speaker 4 She spoke publicly, warning people expressing skepticism about the vaccine. She's a doctor the main medical board did to you, to her, in a sense, what's been done to you. They came after her, claiming initially there were, you know, there was there were no patient complaints at all. They came after her because of her speech. So it was a First Amendment violation to go after her at all. 01:36:58:09 - 01:37:09:04 Speaker 4 They said that she was spreading misinformation, and they said that she was doing that in public speeches and on social media. So that was how the case against her started. And of course, from there they tried to dig up. 01:37:09:06 - 01:37:31:13 Speaker 2 Can I ask a question? Because this is related to also the state of California and a specific law that was passed. Are you saying in the state of Maine that if you speak out against the standard of care or the accepted consensus narrative that the state proclaims the Public Health Administration, that in the state of Maine, you could lose your license? 01:37:31:14 - 01:37:54:12 Speaker 4 Yes. It happened. It happened to my friend Merrill. And so this is I want to get here to the danger of what I call the guild meshed with the state. And of course, these these groups, their official title isn't guild, but I use guild in its historical sense, where you'd have an organization that is the put together of the professional, of an area of professionals, and they make their own rules. 01:37:54:12 - 01:38:14:23 Speaker 4 I have no problem with that if it's a voluntary association, but the minute you enmeshed that with government, you now have a way to shut down dissonance and shut down competitors. So getting back to Merrill, what happened was they ordered her to have a psychological evaluation for mental fitness. 01:38:15:00 - 01:38:17:10 Speaker 2 They should they should have she should have used me for that. 01:38:17:11 - 01:38:18:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. 01:38:18:10 - 01:38:28:02 Speaker 4 Yeah. Seriously. And so they ordered that. And if she didn't comply, that would be considered to be evidence that the allegations against her were true. 01:38:28:06 - 01:38:46:02 Speaker 2 Okay. But these are even bigger points because there are times I make the statement about the danger of a psychiatrist or a psychologist that they can use this fraudulent diagnostic system to label dissidents. 01:38:46:04 - 01:38:58:22 Speaker 4 And has happened throughout history during that sluggish schizophrenia under the Soviet Union? Yes. If you were a dissident, you got labeled with that, you were thrown in sight, you were drugged into oblivion, and you were effectively neutralized. 01:38:58:22 - 01:39:22:21 Speaker 2 But this happened during during Covid is people were labeled. If you were proclaiming Covid misinformation, that this would be a psychiatric condition, that they can call that a delusion. So a delusion, if it does not in any way fit any sense of reality. You know, they kind of did that to you as well when you were when you were going through your spiritual awakening. 01:39:23:01 - 01:39:53:23 Speaker 2 2022 Gavin Newsom approved, which these things always occur like late on a Friday night, excuse me, where nobody can follow what's happening in the news doesn't doesn't really promote it. It was section 2270 designated this dissemination of Covid misinformation or disinformation as unprofessional conduct, defining misinformation as false information contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus, contrary to the standard of care. 01:39:53:23 - 01:40:19:17 Speaker 2 And this gets us in a standard of care. But here's what people need to know. All that information in 2022 that they would have deemed misinformation has turned out to be the accurate one. And science is not a conclusion. Science is a search for truth. So you you undergo investigative scrutiny, empirical scrutiny, and you're trying to prove yourself wrong. 01:40:19:17 - 01:40:28:17 Speaker 2 So you build more studies and more studies. If it was truly science, people would say, let's learn more. But they've weaponized this, Tracy. 01:40:28:18 - 01:41:04:01 Speaker 4 They have. And getting back to what happened to Meryl and where the process is the punishment. They took her license because they ordered this evaluation and they just took her license overnight. Immediate revocation of her license. She's now in court and it looks like she's going to win. But what did that do to her business? You know, the judge has now said that the decision to order a psychological evaluation on her was arbitrary and capricious, which is a serious legal term for for out of their minds to have ordered this on her. 01:41:04:03 - 01:41:34:06 Speaker 4 But this is years later. It's been years since this happened. She has had to fight this. She's left the state of Maine. And so the process is the punishment. Even if you win five years later, what does it cost you? And you know this far better than most. So my concern here is, is really with it's not with a, you know, there being a voluntary board of psychology that can choose to regulate people who choose certification within that. 01:41:34:07 - 01:42:13:13 Speaker 4 My issue is with state licensure, because when a state can decide who does something, it automatically and immediately opens the door for use of it as a weapon against people who are in disagreement with those in power. And when you have a, let's say, you know, a guild, I'm just going to use that term. So let's say an association of psychologists, association of doctors, if they are what people can choose but do not have to choose, they have a strong incentive to maintain the highest standard of care, the highest standard for their members. 01:42:13:13 - 01:42:33:04 Speaker 4 And if they do that, the vast majority of people will choose to go to them, right? I would then I could go to a homeopath, I could go to a natural path, I could go to an MD, and I would choose which one of those I felt most accurately represent the level and the standard of care that I want. 01:42:33:05 - 01:43:05:22 Speaker 4 But the minute you combine the power of that guild with the government, what you get is the ability to use state monopoly power to kill off your competitors, and you no longer have the market incentive to provide the best care because the state is backing you up. And there's this case recently, I'm you know, our friend Matthew discussed this on the podcast, Matthew Lynn Guthrie of this girl called Grace Shah. 01:43:06:00 - 01:43:28:04 Speaker 4 And in the case of what happened to this, this little girl, Grace, who died, her parents sued for what was egregious medical misconduct. And they lost because it was declared. Well, that's within the standard of care. They didn't get it in front of a jury before they get to that point, the medical system, with the government backing it, backs, you know, provides the the backstop. 01:43:28:10 - 01:44:07:09 Speaker 4 If someone were to sue you as an unlicensed person who doesn't have that backing, they're going to land up in front of a jury of their peers, right? You you will in a sense, you are more accountable because the the way that you could get enforcement if, if, if I came to see you or another coach and I felt that the thing that you did for me harmed me, I could take that to court and I could get a jury to determine whether I was whether whether what my story is correct or whether you did not harm me. 01:44:07:10 - 01:44:31:02 Speaker 4 And so there is this enforcement mechanism. And, you know, this is true in the food, in the food freedom space with unlicensed farmers as well. But this idea that the government should determine who can help another person and use where these boards can create monopolies on that is really disturbing to me, because it's not just taking away your income, as you know. 01:44:31:03 - 01:44:38:22 Speaker 4 Anna Runkel, what about the thousands of people that want your help? Their rights are being taken away to? And where is their day in court? 01:44:39:00 - 01:45:02:02 Speaker 1 We all have a right to choose who helps us. It's just. It's just. It's a basic right. I get to decide who I would like to consult, but I'll tell you something about the administrative court. It's not just that the jury is not available to me. I'm not. They're not required to tell me what I did wrong. I fully expected at the beginning of this. 01:45:02:02 - 01:45:20:01 Speaker 1 Could you just tell me what it is? What crossed the line? I'll fix it. I would never want to do that. I would never want to confuse anybody. Can you tell me what it is? They never could. Or did they? Also, I didn't have a right to represent myself and tell them. To tell them what I do. To explain or to ask questions. 01:45:20:01 - 01:45:37:11 Speaker 1 To ask them what? What was it? I didn't have a right. I didn't have that opportunity. It's been years now. And I sat on this zoom call with all these guys making up dozens of false accusations about me, my blood boiling. What could I say? Nothing. There was nothing I could say. 01:45:37:12 - 01:45:45:07 Speaker 2 This is like the Soviet Union. Yeah. You know, you look you look back at the things that could be done in a in a. 01:45:45:09 - 01:45:50:04 Speaker 4 Straight, straight out of a novel to when stop doing the thing. We won't tell you what it is. 01:45:50:06 - 01:46:14:04 Speaker 2 When you don't have some of the constitutional freedoms that make us, quote, unquote, a free state. And I think people who are listening can really question the degree that we do have freedoms, because I think over years they continue to take more and more and more leverage into the personal lives of our of the United States. And I think California is is probably the most egregious example. 01:46:14:04 - 01:46:45:02 Speaker 2 But there is there is Maine as well. I, I have greater concerns. Right. Obviously, this is concerned enough about the people being able to choose. But when you limit and restrict how a person can perform, which is what these licensure bodies do, and let's use the American Academy of Pediatrics as a great example. Not many people go into the depth of understanding this literature like I have done around antidepressants. 01:46:45:02 - 01:47:09:03 Speaker 2 But if you look at the data and it's not questionable if you give a an antidepressant to an adolescent adolescent at age 25, probably more. We just haven't really evaluated it. It's somewhere between a four and six fold increase in the likelihood that they would die by suicide. What does a pediatrician have to do if a teenager enters in? 01:47:09:08 - 01:47:48:10 Speaker 2 Completes a checklist, pharma funded checklist, and they identify in there, they've had suicidal thoughts, the standard of care because it's been pushed by the Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose major funder is what pharmaceutical biotech. Well, you're now acting outside the the standard of care if you don't offer an SSRI. So somebody who identifies as having potential suicidal thoughts, their standard of care is to give a drug that would increase the likelihood that they would die by suicide and compare if you just gave them a sugar pill as an example. 01:47:48:12 - 01:48:27:10 Speaker 2 So it's an illusion, scientific consensus, and an absolute illusion in this country because this is pushed by special interests, special special interest that will benefit from the use of their potential product. And that is where we are right now in the year 2026. It's an awakening to the fact that much of what has been presented to you is not science, but an illusion, and they have hamstrung professionals under these guilds that if you act outside of what we tell you to do, well, then you can lose your license and you won't be able to support your family. 01:48:27:11 - 01:48:36:13 Speaker 2 Tell me where independently minded physicians, therapists, psychologists could actually survive in such a system? 01:48:36:15 - 01:48:39:18 Speaker 4 I think structurally it's designed so that they can't. 01:48:39:23 - 01:48:59:09 Speaker 2 She was free. You're free when you don't have to follow those rules that you can create something for yourself. We were talking earlier and you made such a great point about this, is that when you search out a mental health professional, what are you provided a credential generally. 01:48:59:10 - 01:49:27:02 Speaker 1 Yeah, a list and address. Maybe they give a little blurb in calligraphy on some website, you know, but that there's almost no transparency to what are they about? What's their worldview? What are they actually really good at? And what is just sort of they have some training, but it's not their thing. There's no way to know. And almost no one has the resources, financial or time, especially in a crisis, to go try ten therapists and see if any of them really hits the spot. 01:49:27:04 - 01:49:51:07 Speaker 1 When I was in my two day hearing, they denigrated me at length for being a YouTuber, as if that was cheap, phony, an inherent grift, just trying to get attention. But you know what YouTube is? It's like the real world of me talking to people. Anybody who ever paid me for some time to give my opinion about some dilemma they were in, anybody who ever did that had watched YouTube. 01:49:51:09 - 01:50:08:03 Speaker 1 I mean, everybody who comes to me starts with YouTube. They'd seen my videos. They know my perspective on things. They know I'm sort of they call me Tough Love Fairy. And, you know, they I'll be direct with you. I'll be compassionate, but I'll go. Yeah. No, this is this is probably something that's you've to fix. You need to fix this. 01:50:08:03 - 01:50:37:13 Speaker 1 And so people value my opinion about something and they sign up, they want to pay. They go. What would you say about my thing? Could you help me with this? They have ample they have like thousands of hours of video of like what I'm about, what I think about things. It's free and so it's great transparency. Now I used to work in healthcare and I was a huge champion of this revolution that happened there, where they started introducing transparency of data, measuring outcomes, a tool. 01:50:37:14 - 01:51:00:05 Speaker 1 Gawande was somebody who led all that. And those were heady days in healthcare. People were terrified, oh, they're going to you know, we're going to have the the electronic medical records and people are going to see who gets better outcomes. But that's golden information like, so you can start to learn what treatment patterns result in better outcomes. Transparency tells you who those providers are and you can talk to them. 01:51:00:05 - 01:51:21:21 Speaker 1 And that's what a lot of my work was, was in community health care. Identifying better clinic operations patterns for, for for patient service, for finance, for operations. And and we did it through transparency. Everybody would talk about what we would look directly. Well how long are they waiting. So that's kind of coded into me professionally as you want to know. 01:51:21:22 - 01:51:51:00 Speaker 1 Like, well what what works what's got the best data? When I started looking into a lot of mental health modalities that were suggested to me, and especially with, you know, what you could get on Google about it, I just looked and like some of them have better efficacy than others, and that's really not presented clearly. And a lot of the difference that people experience in what they get out of mental health care has to do with the provider. 01:51:51:00 - 01:52:09:14 Speaker 1 But when providers are very successful, nobody knows why. So to me, just as a as a person with that professional background, I'm like, this is very stone age that you would want to know. Like for people like me, what would be likely to be effective. And so. 01:52:09:16 - 01:52:25:05 Speaker 1 Being on YouTube is the greatest thing you can do for consumers. I think everybody should do it. I know everybody isn't suited to it, but but to be able to put out there and tell them, this is what I believe, this is what I think works. I'm especially good with people with this. I think that would be a great gift to people. 01:52:25:06 - 01:52:47:20 Speaker 2 So so agree. Yeah, initially, and I think it's always important to provide the alternative view here. Right. Because I think we have three people here who agree with the free market and free enterprise, and that the government is in a great protection of the individual's rights. In fact, they violate it more so than not. But I brought some things to you. 01:52:47:21 - 01:53:17:11 Speaker 2 We've had these discussions, and I thought there could potentially be some value. And I've used the treatment of eating disorders as an example only because that was my specialty is that I worked with situations that could have some dire consequences medically. Anorexia, as an example, is the most fatal of all psychiatric conditions. So you're really dealing with somebody who is mind is telling them they can't eat when they're starving themselves to death. 01:53:17:11 - 01:54:03:21 Speaker 2 And I always saw that as a profound challenge to motivate, engage, care for someone, set up an environment and nurture somebody who's who's starving themselves to death. And I put so much time into learning about what works for that particular population. And I really committed myself and invested so much time, resources and money into that education. So I was temporarily deluded into the belief that since I did that in the formal way, that somehow that meant one everyone else who's got the credentials doing the same exact thing wrong or two, because you've invested in this, means that you somehow then can produce better outcomes. 01:54:03:21 - 01:54:29:19 Speaker 2 And that's not the case at all either. One of the things I saw in clinical practice is despite the credential, despite the license, people were engaging in some of the worst of care, especially in situations like anorexia or bulimia that had these dire medical consequences. And the medical professionals, which I always had to consult with, were also not understanding of what is the safest and most efficacious approach. 01:54:29:19 - 01:54:56:03 Speaker 2 So what provided the credential again, was this false sense of security. People went to the expert just because they were the expert, but they never didn't necessarily have expertise. And so we have and I think this has been a multi-generational psyop on the American people is because it's the white coat conditioning, right? It's we elevate somebody to a certain status based on their education, but we never really critically look at what that education is. 01:54:56:08 - 01:55:17:20 Speaker 2 And then we assume, because you went through those steps, that somehow you're better at what you do than potentially someone else somewhere else. And what I've learned here, when I just think critically, is there's nothing that stops Anna Runkel from having the same obsession with how to treat somebody who is anorexic. Right? Not saying that she wants to, but she could have the same ability, especially in a day. 01:55:17:20 - 01:55:44:18 Speaker 2 With such transparency. Any of us can have access to research, right? We if you talk to a lot of professionals nowadays, they say they don't even have the time to evaluate. So where are they getting their information from? Not like the most contemporary research they're getting it from. Who is the special interest that's trying to push something onto you on a standard of care, or what they tell you is the highest quality of evidence. 01:55:44:20 - 01:56:10:16 Speaker 2 People tend to look at what is the title of a research article or a conclusion, and they and they just pair it back what they were told. Right. And so the free market and when we're talking about the free market in terms of is there levels of accountability for let's say someone does do harm, right? If a medical professional does do harm, we think, well, the licensing body is going to protect the public, right. 01:56:10:17 - 01:56:40:06 Speaker 2 And they have recourse. But in reality, when there is harm done by the medical profession, if they follow the standard of care, they're generally protected. It's very difficult to have recourse on that. And we don't trust people when you have that paternal daddy like oversight of government officials, which is just people, right? Again, just human beings. They don't have an inherent power than what you give them. 01:56:40:08 - 01:57:05:05 Speaker 2 They seem to infantilizing people like, like, like somebody could come to you and they wouldn't like, oh my God, I thought you were a psychologist or I thought I was receiving therapy because we're talking about how to respond to a relationship. People are not that incompetent. But when the government tends to communicate as if people can't take care of themselves. 01:57:05:06 - 01:57:32:13 Speaker 2 This is where you start to build this discrepancy of power. It's now taken away from the individual. And I see this all the time. It's fear. Parents of kids in the system are now afraid to institute their authority and their rights, because that is what has happened. Is that authority figure, whether it's a teacher, whether it's a pediatrician, whether it's a psychologist or a therapist, now somehow knows more than them. 01:57:32:15 - 01:57:54:02 Speaker 3 So to me, this case is really about a group who put a lot of money into their education and believe that somebody who hasn't spent that much money on their education shouldn't be able to go out and and take the business they view as theirs. And, you know, these guys are still fighting it to this day. 01:57:54:04 - 01:58:30:08 Speaker 3 And I'm not I'm not the only person to to make a case like this. The Supreme Court actually accepted in 2015, it was North Carolina State Board of Medical Examiners versus the FTC was the case. And in this case, the dental board in North Carolina were trying to shut down anyone who wasn't a dentist that was offering tooth whitening services, and they were offering it at, you know, they were able to offer at a cheaper rate than some dentists were, and they saw this as a threat. 01:58:30:10 - 01:58:53:13 Speaker 3 It turned into a court case that went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court found that they were using this to create a monopoly, that they were using the state board as an as a monopolistic power to push out competitors where the public was not being protected. So this isn't this isn't theoretical. It's something that's happened and it's obviously something I think is happening to you. 01:58:53:13 - 01:59:14:13 Speaker 4 It sounds like the Mafia. That's what the structure reminds me of that. It is? Yeah. Well, I do think that's what's happening. People ask me what I think this is about. It's a little bit about money, but I think mostly it's about authority. And I think in the loss of authority that they have as an agency, I'm not really their problem. 01:59:14:13 - 01:59:39:00 Speaker 4 Certainly not me personally. They're we're living in a world where this type of board is less relevant. And you know why? Because knowledge is a lot more available to ordinary people. We can look stuff up online. People are doing psychedelics. They're doing Jiu-Jitsu and yoga, and they're going barefoot and grass. And we're starting the internet, for better and worse, has allowed us to find our own solutions. 01:59:39:00 - 01:59:57:18 Speaker 4 And so a lot of people are not choosing that. But nonetheless, where I live, it's considered a mental health crisis where there's not enough professional help for the people who need it. So it's hard to understand what would be so important about shutting down all other avenues for people to get help. 01:59:57:19 - 02:00:19:18 Speaker 1 Because it's not about solving a mental health crisis. Yeah, I actually think this is intentional. And we always get into these conspiratorial conversations. But whenever the more of an intervention you provide creates an increase in the condition, you have to actually step back and evaluate it. So we have a sick care system in the United States, health care. 02:00:19:20 - 02:00:49:17 Speaker 1 The more, the more prevention, the more intervention, the more treatment. The more you follow some of these standard rules, the sicker you become. Which of course then provides more opportunity for more intervention, whether that's drugs or technology to scan and all these things. And so the awakening of all of this is that, just like you said, people are moving out of those standard recommendations, realizing that it hasn't served their health or their their well-being. 02:00:49:18 - 02:01:14:17 Speaker 1 Which brings us to why I think this case is so important to all of us who care about freedom and sovereignty and flourishing and health, because when you talk about what we're going to be doing with, most of our conversations are going to fall under this realm. You have a specific firm right now that has agreed to take this on pro bono. 02:01:14:18 - 02:01:43:07 Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm suing the Board of psychology in federal court, and we're going to take it all the way. This is not going to stand. And very happily, a firm called the Pacific Legal Foundation has taken the case. And I don't have to pay a penny. I'm never going to be compensated for the destruction of my business, for the catastrophe, to my family's finances here when we're we have just a few years left before retirement age. 02:01:43:07 - 02:02:06:12 Speaker 4 This is catastrophic to our situation. We have to sell our house. There will be no compensation for that. But thank goodness I don't have to come up with half $1 million or more to try to defend myself here. And on principle, I insist on showing up and stopping this from happening because they don't care about me personally. They want to stop all of us. 02:02:06:12 - 02:02:29:01 Speaker 4 And if they can set a precedent by stopping me, they can put all coaches out of business in California. And if California does it, other states go, well, California did it. And next thing you know, they do have a monopoly on what is mental health, what is mental illness and who can who can you talk to? My audience is up in arms about this. 02:02:29:02 - 02:02:47:22 Speaker 4 They are very clear that they need to be able to choose at different times, the people they believe can help them. That's absolutely part of sovereignty. And that is a that's a literal concept that I teach in my programs, is it's you who must decide. And if something's not working for you, you can quit and try something else. 02:02:47:22 - 02:03:07:18 Speaker 4 And I encourage people, keep trying, keep trying. Don't give up just because two things didn't work. Be like me. Keep going. It's a it's a part of healing trauma that I don't think gets talked about enough. A lot of things. One is moral healing. Growing up in this age of moral relativism has really messed a lot of people up. 02:03:07:19 - 02:03:27:10 Speaker 4 If you don't know the right thing to do, or you feel like it's so, there's something wrong with saying there is right and wrong, it's very hard to do the right thing. And doing the right thing is absolutely the path to happiness and wellness. And it pays to know. So people need moral recovery and they need social recovery people or so isolated and they need communities. 02:03:27:10 - 02:03:46:23 Speaker 4 That's one thing I loved about 12 step. And now I provide that for people who follow me. We have a community and an online community, and about half of my members participate actively in that. And they talk with each other and they I have a league of volunteers who lead the daily practice calls, multiple ones every day for the members and for free. 02:03:47:00 - 02:04:12:04 Speaker 4 You know, it's included in the membership. There's people now. I see them, they visit each other. You know, somebody from Japan and somebody from Norway met up in first Norway and then Japan. And they I love seeing that. And then they do the daily practice together and people form groups. And even on the zoom calls, it's a place where people can get together and they feel like they're with their people, and that's incredibly important. 02:04:12:05 - 02:04:30:11 Speaker 4 I see one of the worst wounds of trauma is the one that feels like you don't belong anymore, anywhere. And even when you're with people, it feels like you can't connect. It's very it's one of my books is about connecting, but it's something that I suffered with a lot until I found my people, which are these people in my community. 02:04:30:12 - 02:05:06:01 Speaker 4 So if the state were to cut me down, I would never stop. This community is a lifeline to people all over the world, and it's very important that we continue, and it's the joy of my life to be there for them. The The Pacific Legal Foundation I didn't even know such law firms exist. They have doubled their staff of attorneys over the past year from 50 to 100, I believe, because there's an escalating pattern of of government overreach into the private lives of citizens like me, into our businesses and our the homes that we own. 02:05:06:01 - 02:05:32:00 Speaker 4 And a pushback is mounting that has to escalate right alongside the government's efforts to just take everything over. And they they have been wonderful to me, very respectful. And it's I'll tell you what, the mental health toll of being attacked and lied about by the state and to not just know that our legal system could do this stuff to a person. 02:05:32:05 - 02:05:59:08 Speaker 4 But I'll tell you, it's been very challenging to me and it's it's actually required me to go to a higher level of being able to self-regulate and to face and release the trauma that it triggers up in me, the ways that it reminds me of the abuse at home. When people lie about you and accuse you of things and you're not allowed to say anything like, I know what that's like already, it was shocking to me that it could happen. 02:05:59:08 - 02:06:19:21 Speaker 4 I knew that it happened to some people, but I just, I don't know, I thought I was special or different or something, and I, I'm not in my hearing. They among the accusations were you call yourself a life coach. And I actually never say life coach. Coaching is the word for when you take money to spend an hour with people and give them advice. 02:06:19:21 - 02:06:48:21 Speaker 4 So I do that, but they acted like it was a crime. They said, I, I call myself a coach, I take money for it. I speak with authority. I was accused of and and that I used the word PTSD and therefore I'm a fraud. That was the conclusion of their expert witness. Therefore I'm a fraud. And that was like a knife in the heart, like I'm somebody who who works overtime all the time to be high integrity. 02:06:48:21 - 02:06:50:02 Speaker 4 I believe in my honesty. 02:06:50:03 - 02:06:55:05 Speaker 1 I so so that type of testimony sounds personal and not professional. 02:06:55:06 - 02:07:01:10 Speaker 4 Clearly. And what is it based on? Nothing. And it's not. It's not a law. 02:07:01:12 - 02:07:04:19 Speaker 3 And you were telling me they kept asking you how much you made. 02:07:04:20 - 02:07:06:05 Speaker 4 Oh, they really zero again. 02:07:06:07 - 02:07:13:18 Speaker 3 This is where I come back to. There's this is this is. Yeah. This is someone is getting the money that is supposed to be ours. 02:07:13:20 - 02:07:27:23 Speaker 4 Yeah. Because, you know, it's a business. We once had ten people working for us. We've had to let almost all of them go because of this. And their families have had to deal with that. But. 02:07:28:01 - 02:07:41:10 Speaker 3 Didn't they tell you you could do all these things as long as you didn't charge? Yeah. So if if money changing hands is what makes it bad, where's that? All that tells me is what you are doing isn't harmful. 02:07:41:12 - 02:08:01:08 Speaker 4 Yeah, so they said what you're doing is dangerous. And once you're taking money, it makes it dangerous. But that's just one of many things that they don't have to explain. They don't. They're not accountable in any way for what they're saying and doing. And what could happen is they could end up paying the legal expenses of the Pacific Legal Foundation one day. 02:08:01:08 - 02:08:09:03 Speaker 4 That's the worst thing that's going to happen to them. But they will never have to pay any price for what they've done to me, or my reputation, or the security of the people who. 02:08:09:07 - 02:08:13:00 Speaker 1 So in the in the lawsuit, you're not going to be recoup for damages. 02:08:13:01 - 02:08:36:11 Speaker 4 No, no. All I'll get is the affirmation that I have the right to free speech and the right to due process. So they have violated both of those constitutional rights of mine. I didn't have due process. And because they're the administrative court and as nobody in administrative court gets, I guess that's just this weird kangaroo court that happens. 02:08:36:13 - 02:08:55:08 Speaker 4 I wasn't allowed to record it. I'm not allowed to even know what the judge decided, because even if the judge decided in my favor, the judge only gives that report to the board, and the board can still do whatever they want. So I'll never know if there was a discrepancy between what the what the judge saw. 02:08:55:12 - 02:09:07:14 Speaker 3 I hope everyone really heard what you said. If you didn't hear that, rewind and listen to it again. You couldn't record what occurred. Yeah, at your own hearing. You don't get to see what the judge said. 02:09:07:15 - 02:09:08:08 Speaker 4 Yeah. 02:09:08:08 - 02:09:10:22 Speaker 3 The judge gives it to the board, and the board can do whatever they. 02:09:10:22 - 02:09:33:03 Speaker 4 Want, still does whatever they want. And of course, they're going to do what they intended to do at the beginning. I'm very curious if they ever go, you know, on second thought, why don't we not do this? So I really don't know. I hope that more is revealed now that I'm suing them in federal court. I do have due process and everything will be properly litigated and we'll have a fair hearing of this whole thing. 02:09:33:05 - 02:09:55:13 Speaker 4 But one of the things that's been alarming is my lawyers filed for a preliminary injunction in the middle of July, and we waited to hear what the judge said about that, and he declined it. So we'll appeal. The good thing about appeal is it just keeps escalating to where it's going to get a more and more fair hearing. 02:09:55:16 - 02:10:22:06 Speaker 4 But the judge, there were many grounds on which they requested the preliminary injunction, which is standard when somebody has their whole livelihood in an online community, has been completely obliterated because of the action of something that is, on the face of it, unconstitutional, unprecedented. And so so he declined it. So it's going to be at least another six months. 02:10:22:06 - 02:10:41:10 Speaker 4 And my husband and I have had to rethink everything, like, wow, what are we going to do about this now? We had hoped there would be a quick solution of stopgap while the case proceeds, but I'm I'm very confident that in the end we're going to prevail. And by then, the best years of my career are going to be gone. 02:10:41:11 - 02:11:00:21 Speaker 4 Unfortunately. But it's very important to me that they can never do this to anybody again and that this gets set right and that the the world be left with people to come in with innovations and unique ways of helping people who can rely on the legal system as we know it. You can sue people if you're not happy. 02:11:01:03 - 02:11:19:03 Speaker 4 There are systems in place. This doesn't need to happen. I wanted to tell you, though, of all the things they accused me of, it made my blood boil. Except one. This one made me laugh and it made me help me understand what we were really dealing with. They had said, you know, you speak with authority. They said, you're just a grifter. 02:11:19:04 - 02:11:43:10 Speaker 4 They said, you don't know what trauma is. You think you had a traumatic childhood, and now you think you can just talk about it. And by the way, when they ask their expert witness, do you know what caused, as he said, it's sexual abuse. So I would clarify, no, CPSC is a diagnosis of a cluster of symptoms that often result from chronic, ongoing stress, often during in childhood. 02:11:43:12 - 02:12:15:18 Speaker 4 And it could be things like sexual abuse. But the confusion. He also got busted. He has a very popular Ted talk out that says we need more community people helping with trauma in a different country, but not Anna Runkel. So, you know the hypocrisy. It did hurt, but this is where I got a laugh out of it. The actual their lawyer, who represents the Attorney General's Office of California, actually said, no, Miss Runkle, you call yourself a fairy. 02:12:15:18 - 02:12:34:16 Speaker 4 And I have looked this up. And again, I couldn't record. But I remember this. It was burned into my mind. I've looked this up, and it's a mythological creature who has magical powers and can wave a wand and heal people. Isn't that misleading the public? I was just like, you know, you're not supposed to make a face. This is all. 02:12:34:18 - 02:12:43:23 Speaker 4 You're supposed to act composed. And it was just like, what do I say? And that was when I understood. Oh, they will say anything. Well, they don't even believe what they were saying. 02:12:44:00 - 02:12:47:19 Speaker 1 Well that's telling. They think about adults as children. 02:12:47:19 - 02:12:48:12 Speaker 4 Yeah. 02:12:48:18 - 02:12:59:20 Speaker 1 Because a four year old may believe that a fairy really exists, but somehow a 40 year old would think they're really setting an appointment with a real fairy, and they're going to give that money to the real fairy. 02:12:59:21 - 02:13:11:13 Speaker 4 I intentionally chose a whimsical yeah, no, it's sad, but true. But that's why I chose a silly. A silly handle is to make it clear. Look, this is not your psychologist. 02:13:11:13 - 02:13:24:07 Speaker 3 Yeah, I can't imagine a scenario in which I would be, you know, scrolling around on YouTube and see the crappy childhood fairy and think I'm getting a mental health professional. What? 02:13:24:08 - 02:13:27:10 Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly. Doctor fairy. 02:13:27:12 - 02:13:46:21 Speaker 1 Well, at least one way you can still make a living of selling books. Yes. And think, God, we at least now have this ability to share our thoughts and ideas and our life experiences through the literary world until those get completely done, and then you pop it into only digital, and who knows what can happen to them then. 02:13:46:21 - 02:14:03:08 Speaker 1 So it's so important to, I think personally is for people to buy hardcover books nowadays, you know, to have that documentation right there and to cherish that. And right behind us in camera is your book. And could you tell us a little bit about that? 02:14:03:09 - 02:14:27:14 Speaker 4 Well, this is the book that's basically my manifesto. This is what happened to me. This is how I figured out how to get better. And I go through chapters on this is what dysregulation is. This is specifically what emotional dysregulation is, which is just a piece of the pie. These are some of the treatments available out there. These are the treatments that are acknowledge or are handy for people who are very dysregulated. 02:14:27:15 - 02:14:49:15 Speaker 4 Because I would just say if you are dysregulated and nobody's there to teach you about that, you would probably struggle to benefit from what's out there. So I give my opinions on things like that. And then I go into I teach my daily practice technique, also available as a free course. I'll give you the link and maybe you could put that in the show notes there of where people can take the free course and learn my technique. 02:14:49:16 - 02:15:12:08 Speaker 4 That very calming. See what happens for you. And and then in it I talk about the I see it as a three legged stool, my experience of being hit by past experiences. It's a dysregulation. It's a feeling of disconnection and it's self-defeating behavior. And all of those things were very hard for me to get help with self-defeating behavior. 02:15:12:08 - 02:15:40:03 Speaker 4 I was I was full of them, and therapists were trying to protect me, I think, by never calling me out. And so I go ahead. I'm like, here's the list of 18 things that are pretty common for folks like us. And there would be things like black and white thinking, being a little overly into conflict. You know, are you always fighting with people, attraction to unavailable people, addiction, certainly evasion of reality through things like screens or porn or fantasy. 02:15:40:05 - 02:16:07:22 Speaker 4 So I just talk about common things that people go through. It's like a checklist and it's a whole chapter. And in the end, I lead up to something that I think is the whole point of healing. It's not just we do need to feel better, but that's the doorway. The point of healing is so that you can become your full and real self, and to bring into the world the gifts that you were meant to bring, because that is the worst kind of unhappiness, is everybody's walking around, you know, you were meant to for more. 02:16:07:23 - 02:16:26:10 Speaker 4 You know you were meant for something. It's hard to put your finger on it when your mind is so burdened, and it's hard to act on it when your life is so stressed out. And and so this my path helps people get the ducks in a row so that you can start to actualize that, to start predicting. This is what I know about my gift. 02:16:26:10 - 02:16:44:10 Speaker 4 And, and that's that's where fairy came from. I did this process myself, and I knew that I really wanted to teach this method to people at scale, but I didn't know how. And somebody help me, help me discern that and say, I think at the time. And we thought writing was likely to be part of it, instead of how about you write your story? 02:16:44:10 - 02:16:47:10 Speaker 4 And that's how it all began, the blog and then the videos. 02:16:47:16 - 02:17:19:17 Speaker 1 I'm reading Marcus Aurelius right now, and just me to it meditations. It just it just occurred to me if he was alive today and people wanted his opinion, he would be he would be cited by the State Board of Psychology in the state of California. And I want people to sit with this as we kind of conclude today's conversation, because this is a this is a meaningful case for freedom when a governing body or a state gets to determine how we help each other. 02:17:19:19 - 02:18:00:15 Speaker 1 It further puts us in a separation division and fear, because now you're afraid of saying the wrong thing. You're afraid of actually reaching your hand out to a neighbor. You're afraid of actually sharing your own life experience because only the credentialed can do that. And that's such an extremely dangerous slide that we're in for a a country that values, you know, freedom and really does promote itself as that as home of the free and the brave, and that the rights of the individual matter over the collective state. 02:18:00:17 - 02:18:36:14 Speaker 1 And so this goes way beyond just the analytical story. Although we are extremely proud of you, your willingness to speak out on this and your willingness to do something about it, to defend yourself because you're not just defending you, you're defending someone like me. And I see it personally because I decided that the mental health system, as it's currently constructed, which requires me to anyone who sees me to provide a diagnosis for insurance reimbursements, everyone has actually funneled into that type of system because they use their health insurance. 02:18:36:14 - 02:19:12:02 Speaker 1 I am mandated to be able to provide that diagnosis, and an insurance company then uses gets to determine whether that money can come to us to be paid for seeing that person where ultimately entering into a world, we have to pathologies the normal just in order to practice. I said that's not for me. And I stepped away and I said, I also want I want to assist people not just in my state, just as a human being who has dedicated my life to certain things and has skills and life experience, that if somebody who is in Tennessee wants to get my opinion, I should offer that. 02:19:12:02 - 02:19:33:22 Speaker 1 And that's where coaching gives us freedom. We're not restricted by state lines, we're not restricted by a governing body. And we have the freedom to be able to search out anyone that we desire for help. And your fight is my fight, and I am just so grateful at horrified and certainly feel horrible for what you need to go through. 02:19:33:22 - 02:19:48:04 Speaker 1 It's a stressful experience. This is your livelihood, but this can be done. Any one of us. And we're going to have an aftershow today. So we get to kind of share our own thoughts on the meaning of this. 02:19:48:05 - 02:20:06:09 Speaker 3 Yeah, I hope everyone joins us for this. I know Roger and I both have a lot more thoughts on this case, and also on the issue of if someone's not if we if we step outside the licensure system, how do we how do we make sure people do get the care that they believe they're getting. So we've both got a lot more thoughts on this. 02:20:06:10 - 02:20:12:08 Speaker 3 We'll share on the after show. So come on over and join us for that. But Anna Runkel. Thank you. 02:20:12:09 - 02:20:13:12 Speaker 4 Thank you to. 02:20:13:14 - 02:20:18:23 Speaker 3 Radically genuine conversation. We're grateful to to know you and we wish you the very best with this case. 02:20:18:23 - 02:20:20:00 Speaker 4 Thanks very much.