March 17, 2023 • 51 mins
Emily and Jen were childhood friends, forming a bond over the chaos within their individual homes. They both found it challenging to fit in within their families and peer groups, and coped with their undiagnosed depression, anxiety, and big feelings by using self-harm.
Now, they’re licensed therapists, and they’ve reconnected to provide the exact tools they wish they had.
They spill:
- Self Harm: what it is and why we do it
- Cutting: the science behind what happens when we do it
- What is ACTUALLY happening when you feel like you want to crawl out of your own skin
- The reality of the misconception that “cutting is for attention”
- Coping Mechanisms: what is considered healthy, unhealthy, and neutral
- How to identify triggers in your life
- How to create a safety plan for when you want to harm
and more…
Check out their workbook HERE!
Check out their practices!
Instagram:
The Truthiest Life on Instagram @thetruthiestlife
Host @lisahayim
To support TTL, subscribe, follow, or share episodes with family and friends!
If you’re loving TTL, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Edited by Houston Tilley
Intro Jingle by Alyssa Chase aka @findyoursails
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I know, Foye, even when times geththeart and you feel
you're in the cucye, just how beautiful life can be
when you soph in your heart, you can finalist to
(00:27):
live your true cious life. Hey, everybody, welcome back to
the Truthius Life. It's your host, Lisa Ham. And today's
episode is really personal for me because it's with two
girls that I actually went to high school with. Jen
and Emily were two girls in my high school that
have now gone on to become therapists and created an
incredible work book together that aims at helping people heal
(00:52):
from self harming behaviors. Now, the two of them were
not always then these peaceful living people. They actually both
came from chaotic homes and have history of self harm.
They only recently reconnected when one of them went on
a podcast talking about her own self harm and mentioned
that she learned from an older girl. That older girl
(01:12):
happened to be Emily, and Emily reached out to talk
about it, maybe apologize, and they ended up forming a
really deep connection and adding meaning to the world by
way of this amazing workbook. In this conversation, which is
very open, myself included opening up about things in high
school that my subconscious conveniently forgot. We talk about topics
(01:36):
such as self harm, and I want to make sure
that anybody who's in that place is well aware before
entering this episode. If anybody listening is thinking of self
harming or is, I want to let you know that
you can text connect for free twenty four seven, which
provides you with twenty four seven crisis counseling and healthy
coping mechanisms. A conversation is really beautiful. You could really
(02:00):
see that the two of them have shifted their lives entirely.
And I say it in this episode, but their complete
inspirations to me as to what you came from doesn't
always have to be your reality. They have worked so
hard and diligently on themselves, learning new coping mechanisms and
creating lives that truly support the people that they want
(02:20):
to be, and I think that that really comes through.
I'm going to link below their workbook. It's called a
Well Mined Space Workbook, a Guide for Self Discovery and Healing.
It's really a fantastic way to dive inward, get to
know yourself, get to know your own triggers, and put
safety plans in place for any places that you or
someone you know might fall victim to harming themselves. This
(02:43):
conversation is so eye opening because a lot of the
things we think we know about what we do as
people actually has deeper psychology and physiological reasoning, and the
two of them beautifully display that for us. So proud
of you, Jen and Emily. Thank you for coming on
on the Truth is Life and for live your truthiest lives.
This conversation is incredibly powerful. Let's jump in. Hello, Jen
(03:08):
and Emily, Welcome to The Truthiest Life. Thank you, Hi, Hi,
I'm so excited to be with you, guys. For a
little bit of background, the three of us went to
high school together. Emily and I are the same grade.
Jen is a year younger, So this is the first
time I'm probably speaking to both of you since high school.
(03:28):
Is that possible? Probably? Yeah, definitely. That's frightening, just because
we all look at the exact same But really, I
can't believe that it's been so long neither. It's wild.
So the two of you have a really interesting story. Well,
one of you walk us back into how you recently reconnected.
(03:51):
So we were each on another podcast. You were on
also the former high school teacher, and we each told
our own stories and Jen had mentioned in her story
something about me. She didn't name me, but when she
said it, I was like, oh, okay, I think that's me.
(04:12):
And I reached out to her about it and she
was like, Yep, it was you. And we started talking
more and connecting, you know, reminiscing about our past relationship
and what actually connected us together. Yeah. It was actually
really weird because when I recorded that podcast, I got
(04:33):
really nervous because the question was like, did anybody teach
you about self harm? And obviously I didn't mention Emily's name,
but when she heard it back, she messaged me on
Instagram and she and I hadn't spoken and probably a
few years, and she had asked, is that me? And
I was like yes, But you know, we did this
whole back and forth and it just kind of then
(04:55):
like reconnected us. And ironically we have very similar history
since high school. So it was just like a really
cool thing to come together after that and really discuss
like what happened with the two of us together and
fast forward to what led to this conversation is the
two of you are now working together and came out
with this amazing workbook. But before we jump there, just
(05:18):
to give a little bit more background into the stories
that connected you both, a teacher of ours in our
high school started a podcast and he brings people on
to share their high school experience under his assumption that
high school matters, meaning what happens in high school has
an impact on your life in some way. And I
listened to both of your episodes knowing both of you. Emily,
(05:41):
maybe you a little bit better than Jen, but I
feel like I knew you by the end of high school. Jen,
you know from cheerleading, I think, and some other things.
But what I didn't know is like who they were
individually at home, and that's the part that they kind
of shared. They shared about struggling with depression and self harm,
(06:02):
and it was so eye opening. I don't know, you know,
like these are two people that I knew really well,
and Jen, I definitely didn't know anything that was going
on in your life. Emily, I knew a little bit,
but just high school, the magnitude of the things that
we go through as young adults by ourselves, I forgot
or I didn't know, and I just it was so
(06:25):
brave of you both to share those really dark parts
of your lives that you know you got through so beautifully.
Thanking you. It was a weird experience because I had
not ever, really obviously with close friends, had spoken about
some of these things. But even a lot of my
close friends when they listened to the podcast, had no
(06:45):
idea what was going on. Right and in high school,
I think I can speak for myself, but I think
we have this idea that like everyone knows what's happening
with us, right, like I wear my emotions on my sleeve,
or I feel like sometimes this self absorbed like everyone
knows everything, or like I'm the only one going through
something right. Sometimes there's like no in between. And so
(07:07):
a lot of my close friends were like, I had
no idea that you were going through X, Y and Z.
I knew certain things but not others. So it was
a really interesting experience to really disclose it in a
very open way. I remember when you said that some
of the self harming techniques you I believe you said
learned from an older girl who turned out to be emily.
(07:27):
But in that moment, like people came to mind who
that could have been. But it was not Emily. Again,
I knew Emily, and although I knew there were difficult
things happening in your home, you're still a very like
light person. You always had a laugh and a smile,
and that wasn't faked. So it was very surprising for me,
somebody who I think it's also like intuitive and sad
(07:49):
that I didn't know that you know, Emily, that you
were going through those things. To your point, I think
you said it so well, Jen, like you either think
that nobody else could understand or everybody just knows and
it's the same. And I think I fall into that
camp of like we're all going through it, but then
like we're not. We're all actually having very different experiences.
That's so true, And I think it's interesting for me
(08:12):
to hear you say that my smile was genuine, because
reflecting on it, my first reaction was, well, it wasn't,
But actually it was right like in those moments when
I was in school or socializing around people, it was genuine.
It was a smile that I felt. But then when
(08:34):
I would go home and I was alone with my
thoughts and I was alone with myself, that's when all
of that sadness came forward. That's when all of that
struggle to deal with what my home environment was, what
my inner world was, really I couldn't ignore it. DN
learned from Emily. Emily, did you learn from somebody else? No,
(08:57):
not in a conscious way. So I remember the first
time I self harmed. I was in ninth grade, and
essentially I think I had gotten into a fight with
my mom or something like that. But I remember that
the feeling that birthed the self harm for me was anger.
(09:18):
Do you know when you feel anger in like that
physical way and you just need that physical release of
it for whatever reason? In that moment what I went to.
My tweezers were sitting on my desk or vanity, and
I saw them and I grabbed them and I cut
(09:38):
myself with them. And that was the first time I
ever cut. And it really felt like this instinctual, visceral
place of knowing I needed to get out from inside
my body what was happening, but I didn't have effective
tools to do that. I didn't have any tools at
(09:59):
that point. I found this tool in that moment. So
it's interesting to realize that I didn't actually learn it
from someone again, not necessarily unconscious level, but it just
came from inside of me. Thank you so much for
sharing that. Again, it's hard for me to hear these
things just because I was there ish and to know
(10:21):
what happens after that three o'clock bell goes on and
we go home and school is hard for so many reasons.
But at the same time, for a lot of people,
it's their safe place. It's away from our family drama.
We tuck it all away, both of you. From my memory.
You know, we're popular girls that had girlfriends or boyfriends,
and you guys, weren't, like you didn't go to school,
(10:43):
and you were socially isolated, I guess in my mind.
So just to know that like that was maybe some
sort of a safe place, but when you get home
into the reality of like of your life, it's hard
for me to hear. But I think when you said
primal emotion and anger right like it's so real and
I so vividly felt that you said like itching to
(11:03):
crawl out of your own body. I don't know if
that perfectly describes anxiety or some other human experience that
has another name, but I've certainly been there, and I
assume our listeners have been in there and it's in
those moments you'll do anything to get out. It's so true. Yeah,
I think you're right that that is for me. Also,
(11:24):
the experience of anxiety, like this discomfort of being in
your own skin and just wanting to shift whatever is happening.
And yeah, especially when you're young and you don't have
certain role models to teach you the healthy ways to
deal with those feelings, because we all feel them. It's
not unique to experience anxiety, it's how we cope with them.
(11:47):
So yeah, I think that is exactly exactly right. And
add anger into it. I feel like that's really like
the recipe, just kind of as we're saying it. You
guys are the therapist, so pull me back if I'm wrong.
But it's like you've got anxiety that kind of makes
you like spin in circles an itch and feel uncomfortable.
But I guess, since we're all being honest, I had
one moment in my entire life that I considered self
(12:09):
harm or attempted and I don't know, it didn't feel
real enough compared to your story, but the icing on
the cake there was anger. It was about of anger
on top of all the feelings. Of stuckness that I
was like, Okay, this is something, and I know it
didn't I mean I didn't get so far because there
was no release after that. It was not deep or
(12:32):
anything like that. But the desire too was and that
doesn't invalidate the experience. You know, you still felt and
went through all of that, you know, and it still
is self harm. And I'm glad it wasn't worse, and
I'm glad it didn't you know, develop into anything. It
was still you know, your experience of that. So the
two of you at some point connected in high school
(12:54):
and Emily, what was it like to share that with
somebody else, to first of all, admit that you do that,
or to like teach. I never shared with Jen with
the intention of teaching her. I want to make sure
that I'm clear about that. For me and for most
people who self harm, it's all about self destruction, right,
You're not looking to be aggressive outwardly towards anyone else.
(13:16):
And so when Jen and I connected, you know, I
knew her family life was very similar to mine. We
both were products of divorce, We both had parents that
weren't always present for us. And I remember, like one
and I think this was the moment Jen was in
my car. We were driving around, we were listening to music,
(13:38):
and I just felt connected to her and I shared
with her when I was experiencing and I think, and Jen,
maybe you remember also, but I think in that moment
you had also been sharing with me certain things that
you were going through, and it was just this unfortunate
but beautiful connection. That makes sense. Yeah, I would agree.
(14:01):
I would agree wholeheartedly. It was never and like I
do want to be very clear about this, It was
never Emily called me. It was like, Jen, look at
this thing I'm doing, you should do it too, kind
of thing like it works, you know. It was never
like that. It was very much that is the distinct
memory in your Yellow Extera. I remember it vividly. I
(14:22):
remember vivid like, but we were probably both just sharing openly.
And I think it really was in passing of like
you mentioning that you've cut before. When Emily reached out
to me after the podcast came out, I wanted to
make it like very clear to her that no matter
who it was, I could have heard it on the radio,
(14:43):
I could have heard it in a song, I could
have watched in a movie. Seen it in a commercial,
heard some random people on the street talking about cutting.
At that point in my life, it was just something
that stuck in my head. Whether it came from Emily
or not, it was something that I wanted, I needed
at the time to find something to numb the emotional pain, right,
(15:04):
and physical pain can sometimes really numb the emotional pain.
Not to mention the complexities of you know, when you
bleed and endorphins and all of that and how it
literally naturally numbs your body. But it was just one
of those where Emily had mentioned it and it sounded
good to me kind of thing, and that's where it
(15:25):
went from there. Well, I mean, it's just such an
incredible story how the podcast kind of created this whole
circuit back to each other and where we grew up
was a really strange place. I think if anybody ever
listens to the podcast high School Matters, that comes through
you know, it's a place where everybody looks like they're
doing okay, and unlike a lot of like wealthy towns
(15:50):
that surrounded us, Like, there was a lot of drama
and real drama, not high school drama. There was called
and bomb threats by the older boys, that like during
our four years together and you know, Jen one year
below us, Like the magnitude of the things that went
on in our high school, Like you could just tell
(16:12):
that things were not okay in a lot of the
homes outside of school, even though they presented in shiny
cars and expensive cars and all the things. It's so true.
And if I'm being fully transparent and vulnerable here for
me when I write in high school, and I obviously
(16:32):
came came from the same place, but I was jealous
of you, Lisa, Like I would look to you and
look at your life and your family and your friends
and what you looked like, and felt like, oh, I'm
not good enough, right, Like that's that's what you're supposed
to be, right, But the reality is even then, and
(16:53):
I hope this is okay to say, I knew that
it's our life wasn't perfect inside your home, but it
was about what I projected onto that, right. What I
my insecurity is that I just ended up projecting onto you.
It could have been anyone, you know, and I think
that's a lot of people in high school, and probably
a lot of people who look at the high school
(17:15):
we went to and the people in it. Yeah, I
think that a lot of people probably assume a lot
about me, and you're one of the people that have
actually probably been inside my home to see more than
you know, met the eye there. So I don't know
(17:36):
what memories you have about all of that, but I
appreciate you sharing that. You know, and then I was
had those same thoughts about somebody else, you know, like
it's things were certainly not okay in so many aspects
of my life, and I just I want to keep
the focus on you guys today, but I share that
because everything that looks perfect on the outside isn't or
(17:59):
look better even if it's not perfect. Suddenly, before we
jumped on, though, you did say that you wanted to call,
you know, if it was okay to mention some of
the things that we did that you remembered and see
how I felt about them. And I said, yes, you
could say it, but I don't really remember off top
of my head, I might remember when you say it,
So what sort of things are you remembering? So the
(18:20):
thing that stands out most to me when I remember
some of the things that we did was being in
health class together, I think in ninth grade, and we
used to have this folder that we would pass back
and forth to each other. I don't know if you
remember that, and it was definitely men. I don't know
what was in the fault. So we used to pass
(18:44):
back and forth these cutouts from magazines of like inspiration
of body types, and then we would like talk about
what we ate and what we didn't eat and share
our food logs. Essentially in that health class, you know.
And I maybe went outside of that, I don't really remember,
(19:04):
but it's that being in that class, sitting next to
each other and passing the folders back and forth made me.
That's what I remember. I definitely remember something stemming from
health class. And I don't know what they were teaching
us in health that stimulated that within us. And I mean,
I'm very open about my history of disordered eating and
body image stuff, but my memories around not to say
(19:26):
they didn't exist in high school. But I don't remember
what it looked like so much as when I got
to college. But I do remember attempts to not eat period,
Like it was like we just want to be skinny.
Let's just like attempt to not eat and similar to
the self harm, like I was never any good at
it quote unquote, So I never had anorexia because or
(19:46):
had weight changes or anything. And I was already a
thin girl, like you said, mentioned like my body type
is thin to begin with. But I think it's worth
mentioning perhaps that the early two thousands were were very
strange in the sense that we celebrated bodies that looked
anorexic or we're anorexic, like that's what we saw, and
(20:09):
maybe we still do in some capacities. But Mary Kate
and Ashley or Mary Kate at the time, like she
had that anorexic I think she was on her ex
and we celebrated that that look in the media, and
we didn't call each other out for not eating, like
we pushed each other to not and I don't know
why or and maybe that comes from both of us
(20:32):
coming from you know, shaky homes Emily, but so not Okay, Yeah,
no it's not. But we didn't know any different. Yeah,
we didn't know. We didn't know how bad it was
what we were doing or hurting each other by by
creating a bond over it exactly, which is similar to
me and jem right, same thing. There's this right here
(20:54):
over self harm and it, and it is strange to me.
To me, there was something about that time, I'm connecting
with you over you know, the body image stuff, connecting
with you Jen over self harm that obviously is destructive,
but I needed the connection right, like it felt I
used to connect with someone because everywhere else was lonely,
(21:16):
and I think there were a few of us in
you know, again Jen's tied to leave you out. But
in our grade, you know, we were so grade segmented
at the time that like I only really knew what
was going on, but there, you know, I felt like
I wasn't part of the quote unquote cutting club, but
I know that there were a bunch of girls in
our grade who were doing that that would hide it
under their sweatpants. We used to put slits in our
(21:37):
sweatpants and they'd put it there, and it was just
I was laughing at the slit in our sweatpants. That
in the fashion, not the cutting. But some of those
girls were also really popular and like fast with boys,
and that too made the behavior seem a little bit
more normalized because the cool girls were doing it. This
wasn't the emotionally retreated people who looked like they didn't
(22:02):
have any friend. It was the popular people were doing
this in our grade or in our grade, Emily Jen,
was it different in your grade? No, the eating, the
eating stuff, the body image stuff very much in my
grade as well, very much encouraging each other to absolutely
not have a regular bagel, have to scoop it out,
have iced coffee for your meal, like, very much body focus.
(22:26):
From what I know, and obviously I have not talked
to every single person in my grade, but I don't
know personally anybody else in my grade who's self harmed,
So I'm really not sure what was going on in
my grade. I'm sure that there were other things, but
body image was definitely a huge part. But really Emily
was the person that I had connected with, not even
(22:48):
just to clarify, not even connecting around cutting in general
and self harm, but connecting around mental health and where
we were and how we were doing and how we
were not doing very well and not having support. But
I think that then takes every shape, right because, like
you know, depression and anxiety, disordered eating, self harm, they're
all in the category of mental health and how are
(23:09):
we doing and who do we have to talk to? Totally,
So the two of you go on to in the
last year create this amazing workbook, the Well Mined Space Workbook,
A Guide for self discovery and healing. And it's pretty
amazing now that we've heard your stories of how far
the two of you have come individually and collectively, both
(23:30):
therapists with your own businesses helping others, and when I
look at both of you, I'm also seeing like deeply
peaceful people, which is I really don't use this word
a lot, and hopefully if you listen to this podcast,
like you know, I don't use this word a lot.
Truly inspiring, maybe because I know you guys from you know,
and more than knowing you guys, I know you're like
(23:51):
your energies. Like I knew who you were then and
what it felt like to be in your presence, and
now I know what it feels like to be in
your presence now. And I wouldn't describe you guys dark then,
but there's a relaxing, calmingness around you that you've created
because you certainly both didn't come from that, so that's
(24:12):
just amazing. And then the workbook itself, I thought I
could just start by asking you you you know you
say a guide for self discovering and healing, and that
word is an interesting one to me, so I'm curious
what healing means to both of you and why it
was included. I think a big part of why the
workbook is so special to both Emily and myself is
(24:35):
because we didn't necessarily have something like this when we
were going through our really I would call my times
like very dark times, but we didn't have that, And
I don't think I really ever found healing per se
truly actually until I got clean and sober. Then I
(24:56):
found healing and I found it that way, and for
the past fifteen years of focusing on that, that's where
a lot of my healing came in, and a lot
of it came from like learning from other people and
getting support in ways that I didn't have when I
was younger. And I think that's why a huge part
of this workbook we really wanted to create like what
would we have wanted when we were at that age,
(25:18):
you know, Like what would I have wanted? What would
like fourteen year old gen have wanted in a workbook?
And like it's even little things of like the cover
of the workbook, we didn't want it to say self harm.
We didn't want it to be blatantly obvious what this
workbook was about, because we want people to feel comfortable
holding it or being out somewhere and like taking it
(25:40):
out of their backpack or something. You know. We wanted
it to be what I would have wanted when I
was younger, and what Emily would have as well. So
I think that's like another part of it that we
don't really talk about too much, But to me that
was really important. Is this workbook designed for teenagers or
what ages did you have in mind when you created it?
(26:00):
Because I didn't. I actually didn't realize that. So we
don't have necessarily like a very specific age group. I
think because a lot of teenagers do tend to fall
into the category of self harming behaviors. The ideas a
lot of teenagers will hopefully use it, but it's really
for anybody. It's for anybody at any age. But you know,
(26:22):
like when you're in your thirties, you don't necessarily want
to carry around a workbook that says like learn how
to stop cutting, you know, like, no, I want to
carry that around. So it's probably going to target a
lot of adolescents, but we want it to be for everybody.
I love that, but it's so helpful to know that
this is geared towards adolescents, for anybody listening that has
(26:43):
somebody in their life to know that adolescents have no tools,
or we as adolescents had no tools. Maybe it's different
now with the rise of social media and internet access
that we didn't have as teenagers, which makes us sound
really old, but that's the thing where we were so
toolless as lessons and even you know, Emily, going back
to the beginning, and you said, like wanting to get
(27:05):
out of your own skin, like nobody ever said that,
So it felt like such an isolating experience, and nobody
ever talked to us about emotions and what they feel
like in our body and sensations and how they emotions
go through. Like we had no outer education around the
internal experience, which left us tool less, especially in those moments.
(27:27):
And everything feels so much more intense when we're an
adolescent because our whole world is just school and back
school and back school and back whereas where we get
to be an adult, like we can find pockets of
joy in other places, other people, other situations. We can
move if we have to you know, there's so many
things that make us less stuck, so so amazing to
(27:47):
actually say, here, teenager, here's an actual tool. This is
what it feels like in your body when you're triggered,
and here's what you can do instead. So, Emily, what
does the word healing mean to you? Emily, what does
(28:08):
the word healing mean to you? Yeah, So for me,
when I think about healing, I lean towards the space
of the self healing, right, going inside of yourself and
really understanding what's happening in your body so that you
can then take that and use it to inform what
(28:28):
you then do, right, to no longer go towards self harm,
but to choose something that's actually going to be helpful
for your life and actually address the thing that's happening
inside of you. However, also, I think, especially when you're
talking about adolescence, you know, we're talking so much about
(28:49):
being isolated and lonely. It's pulling in community, you know,
And that was another thing we talked about, right, this
connection that we had over something that was harmful. And
so I think in the workbook there's a few exercises
to share outwardly, to write a letter to someone that
(29:09):
you love to let them know what's going on for you,
because it's not something that you can do alone. You know, yes,
you can do the workbook on your own, but the
point for the overall healing, you have to pull people in.
And not everyone has a parent, so the loved one
might be someone else you know might be asking someone
(29:32):
to seek out therapy. It might be a guidance counselor
at school, or a teacher or a friend. But the
point for me is that it's important that through healing
that to be able to heal, you have to pull
in community. Also. I was really impressed with that template
because I think we get the most frozen around our
(29:54):
loved ones and sharing the things that we're doing that
we don't want to be doing anymore or no that
are harmful, whether that's disordered eating, cutting, abusing alcohol, or
using drugs. There's so much shame around those things when
it comes to speaking them in my experience, which is limited,
(30:16):
but when you give a template that says this is
how I can express this to my family who doesn't understand,
you give power to the person by taking so much
of that heavy lifting away that gets stuck in your throat,
but I thought it also shined light on the fact
that your loved ones probably aren't going to understand initially
(30:37):
what the self harm behavior is truly about. What in
your professional opinion or personal lives, whatever you choose to
share either of you, do you find is a typical
response of a loved one responding to finding out that
their daughter, sister, whatever is self harming. So I actually
(31:00):
used the template that we created with one of my clients.
So before we had advertised about it, I had given
certain activities to some of my clients to test out,
like how are they going to like them? Or are
they going to be effective? And the template was actually
exceptionally effective. And I had a client and a parent
(31:22):
sit in with me, and you know, I had given
it to the client prior and said fill it out,
you know, change whatever you need to change, keep whatever
you want to keep. And it was so helpful in
doing exactly that, in lifting this responsibility almost of like
trying to think of what to say, because it's basically
like written for you and it can be adjusted. But
(31:43):
the reaction from my experience in my professional life is
always different than the perceived you know, or the assumed
reaction prior to talking about it. And I have seen
a lot of parents be very open to listening being
you know, given tools when you talk about this, and
(32:05):
then you can give people some tools of what to do,
Like one of our tools in our workbook is our
safety plan. A safety plan is a tool to use
with a parent as well. I have found that parents
are much more understanding, but I do find that there's
a lot of unknowns still when it comes to self
harm that I can't guarantee someone, you know, I'll never
(32:28):
guarantee someone that if they talk about it, it's never
going to happen again. You know. I can't sit down
with a parent and say your you know, kid, disclose this,
It's never going to happen again. That's not true. Most
of these things take a really long time to heal,
and so I think setting more realistic expectations for people
is also one of the things I try to do,
because I don't want anybody to think that this is
(32:49):
like a magic cure all that they talk about at
one time and it goes away. It doesn't. These are
things to work on for months and years sometimes, so
trying to focus on setting those very realistic expectations when
it comes to stopping a specific behavior or like decreasing
the behavior. So I have found the template to be
(33:11):
one of the most effective tools in disclosing self harm.
There is a misconception that I'm familiar with, and I
think in your book you talked about it too, that
self harm, at least in the form of cutting specifically,
is for attention. What would you say to that, Emily,
I actually just recently read something where so many times
(33:34):
people say, oh, they're doing that for attention, right, So,
whether it's cutting or anything else, there's the sense of
it's for attention, but really it's connection seeking, right, And
so if you think of it that way, it's never
for attention. It's one to deal with difficult feelings in
the only way you know how, and it's wanting to connect, right,
(33:59):
Like when you wear something on your body, it's screaming
a message of I'm in pain, and it's not about
the attention of look at me. It's see my pain,
please someone see my pain. It's screaming for help exactly.
You said that so beautifully, I think, and it also
(34:20):
as you were saying it made me think, like, okay,
so is attention a bad thing. Right, we have this
idea they just want attention. They're so attention seeking that
makes themselves centered more important than other people. It's like, no, okay,
maybe it is for attention. Then let's like scale that
back and be like because they need attention and help.
And you know, we're not not laughing at it, but
(34:44):
I think that we need to reframe that the idea
of needing attention also as being a bad thing. And
a lot of the people that need attention are neglect
of attention in their lives where it is deserved and needed,
especially during the formative years where we are still you know,
we might look like many adults as adolescents, but we're
(35:05):
still babies. Exactly. You said exactly what I was thinking.
You know, I classify what I went through as neglect
and that's a form of abuse. And so, yeah, you're right,
I needed attention, but I didn't. I didn't need it
from the people in school before we're seeing it, right,
(35:27):
I needed it from my parents. I needed it from
an adult who could help me deal with what I
was experiencing. Really really well said in the book, you
start by including your own stories. What was the purpose
of that? And I asked that because again, you guys
are not just two people that got together to create
a workbook. You are a therapists, and it's not often
(35:49):
that we hear therapists share their own journey. So what
was it like to share that and why did you so?
We felt like it was really important to be honest
about our experiences one, but also it adds something to
the workbook, right, It adds something for someone who is
(36:10):
going to pick up this workbook and use it to
know that the people who wrote it have been where
they are, who have gone through the same things and
are also on the other side of it. I think
is a really important message to send to the people
who are using it. Beautifully, said Jen. In the beginning,
(36:30):
you were talking about the physiological response of cutting or
when we're injured, and you share about that in the
book too. It really spoke to me. But for anybody
who doesn't understand cutting, whether you know somebody who is
doing that or don't think you do, can you share
what happens when you do cut for people to understand
(36:54):
why it is a coping mechanism, an unsafe one, but
a coping mechanism. Nonetheless, Yeah, absolutely, one of the things
that's really interesting about cutting, but that's kind of very
similar to drug use, is that when you get an
injury on your body, especially like bleeding, obviously, there are
(37:16):
reactions on a physiological level that your body tends to
release endorphins, right, and endorphins are kind of like this
natural numbing effect, trying to like, you know, numb whatever
kind of pain. You know. It's like when people get
really injured, and sometimes they don't even like notice it first, right,
people who may have gotten shot, right, they don't even
notice it first because their adrenaline is so hyped up
(37:37):
and it kind of essentially like numbs everything else, right.
And so in a very similar way that there is
drug seeking behavior in drugs target specific parts of our brain,
cutting does something very similar in that it won I
think pain in general takes physical pain in general takes
our minds off of more emotional mental pain, and then
(38:00):
literally in your body when you're bleeding, your body has
this natural response of adrenaline which then automatically kind of
like numbs other things as well. And so cutting is
like a very interesting we'll call it a coping skill
because it temporarily might work, but typically in the long
run does not end up being all that helpful. In fact,
(38:21):
can be very very harmful, but it does on a
physiological level, it does make you feel a little bit
euphoric or numb in the same way drugs do. I
think also when we talk about healing, when your body
is injured or your body is sick, if it's working properly,
the first thing that it tries to do is to
(38:43):
start the healing process. When you experience in an emotional
pain and you don't know how to heal that, so
you seek out the physical so that your body starts healing.
You experience it everywhere, right, So, yeah, there's the physical
healing of the wound, but there's an emotional relief that
happens in that. Also, I'm going to assume that this
(39:06):
is an addictive behavior that's hard to break, speaking from experience,
would you guys agree, Yes, definitely. It's just something that
I think is really eye opening because I think most
of us can digest that alcohol is addicting, and something
hard happens in our life, we turn to it harming
yourself physical pain as it presents itself, It's hard to
(39:28):
believe that this would be a habit to break. But
now that you've described it as this physiological cascade of
adrenaline that takes the pain away from where it is
in our body, it makes a lot more sense to
me as somebody who never went down that route. Really,
it's so helpful to understand the human experience in that way,
and given that it's so instantaneous, I assume it can
(39:51):
be really hard to break because very few things are
that instantaneous when we're in pain. Sitting with our own
pain right is a really hard task if we're used
to running from it. In your book, you talk about
(40:14):
different coping skills and you label them as harmful, healthy,
and neutral. I believe did I get that right? I
think it's healthy, unhealthy, and neutral. I think we picked right.
I think healthy, unhealthy and neutral neutral being in the middle.
Can you explain the difference between the three coping techniques
and how having these on hand can help somebody in
(40:35):
those heightened sense of I need to get out of
my body to think about what's the best thing for me.
To your point before right, you said there aren't a
lot of things that are going to provide immediate relief
to the emotional pain, And I would say that pretty
much anything that provides immediate relief to the emotional pain
is going to fall under the unhealthy category, right, cutting, binge, eating, drugs,
(41:01):
and alcohol. You could fill in lots of things there,
So I would I would say that any anything that's
the immediate and self destructive would be the unhealthy neutral.
I would classify more under like the zoning out, so
scrolling on your phone, watching TV, playing video games, yourself,
(41:26):
distracting yourself, right, exactly right, And so then the healthy
ones are going to be the ones that aren't so easy,
that aren't so quick. Right, it's daily meditation practice, it's breathing,
it's journaling, calling somebody, the hoping skills that often make
(41:46):
us more vulnerable, that force us to sit with the
feelings and not push them out. I would also say
to add on neutral, because I think neutral is wearing.
It can get a little bit murky, can get a
little bit confusing. Something that I think in particular falls
into neutral. Are some of these other techniques that you
(42:09):
might discuss with someone instead of them. It's almost like
a harm reduction technique of instead of cutting, snap a
rubber band on your wrist, hold an ice cube for
a period of time. It's still a harmful in a
way behavior, but not as harmful as cutting. Right, because
any object that you use, obviously there's always a risk
(42:31):
you hit something incorrectly, you hit something a vein, it
might be dirty, you might get an infection. So something
like snapping a rubber band on your wrist or holding
an ice cube is still on a level of harmful,
but not as harmful, if that makes sense, but still
providing a sensation, Especially when somebody is trying to wean right,
(42:52):
it can be so hard from having this as your
vice and then saying okay, meditate right, like that's a leap, Yes,
that's a leap. And it also typically people won't do
it right because we're looking for some other physical right,
You're obviously looking for something physical, and so to say
like just so cut just like maybe go read a
book or something like that, they're not going to give
(43:13):
the same effect. So we want to kind of replace
it with a in certain instance it is with a
less harmful option. So that's where I would say, like
mutral also falls in right, And it's so helpful to
really think about that because, like we talked about, the
physiological response of cutting is the adrenaline, So to take
that away from somebody and then have them sit with
(43:34):
their emotions unlikely to cause lasting change would be my guest.
So you know, obviously anybody who is cutting beyond the
workbook needs to be working with a professional to go
through these changes. But my hope is in sharing this
is not only to promote the workbook, which is such
a great tool, but also give some insight into the
(43:55):
self harm mindset if you have never been there, or
if you are there, to know that you're certainly not alone.
In your book as well, you talk about a safety
plan and helping readers create one. I think you mentioned
it as well, really or Gin, But briefly, what is
a safety plan? Yeah, a safety plan is a really
(44:17):
good tool that you can literally have either like a
print out of like I usually print out safety plans
for my clients when we create them together. And so
the point of a safety plan is to start to
learn what your warning signs are that like, something may
be brewing right in this instance that you might have
a desire to cut right, So what are some of
the warning signs that you notice? Do you start to
(44:38):
get intrusive thoughts, do you start to feel something in
your body, do you start to withdraw from friends or
there are things that you can notice and you write
them down so that you can actually have this in
front of you. Are the things that you notice that
you can then pause and say, what are some things
I can do right now? Can I call this person?
(44:58):
Can I go place? And so we write down because
when you're in crisis it's really hard to think clearly.
We write down people their phone numbers, places that you
can go to distract yourself, things that you can do.
I always include the number for your local crisis services obviously,
numbers obviously for like nine on one, your closest hospital,
(45:19):
things like that, so that when you're in a crisis,
you don't really have to think too much. Because when
we're in crisis, we have a hard time thinking clearly.
So if it's all down on paper, your parent, your
loved one can go to your safety plan and say,
what are some things that you can try right now?
Right We include coping skills on there as well. What
are some things you can do? Take a walk, go
(45:39):
to a coffee shop, go to a record store, call
your friend, things like that, so that it's literally all
written out for you. You don't even need to really
think about it at that point. Well, I think that's
that's brilliant and just hopping a little further, you talk
about triggers in your life, and you know, I think
when I think back to high school, like there was
no awareness to a trigger. It was just like I
(46:00):
feel really bad and my body make it col way,
like we had no insight around what came before. So
I loved how you specified external and internal triggers and
give people something to recognize that something comes before the
inward explosion. And the more you study yourself and get
to know that, the more you can stop the train
(46:25):
wreck that might feel inevitable in other circumstances. So I
think you guys just did such a wonderful job, and
it's really hard to work together. So I think that's
also really cool and speaks to maybe your connection to it,
how connected you guys are not because you know, just
from like a really like soul level, you guys are
really connected and it came out so beautifully. Is there
(46:47):
anything else about the workbook that you want to share
that we missed? We are going to try and make
this workbook into print, and right now this is an
ebook and Okay, are going to print it because we
both love the idea of actual something you can hold
in your hands. So tuned because we are going to
(47:08):
print it, that'll be awesome. I agree, a journal for
me has to be something I can write in. And
I think that a lot of people would love to
be able to gift this as well to those in need,
whether it's a parent to help a child, or a
friend even I mean, like I said, it's written, it's
not geared towards. When I read it, it didn't read
like this is for just adolescents. It read towards. This
(47:31):
could be helpful for anybody, even if you don't self harm,
just to get to know triggers, have a safety plan
in place, just start thinking about about yourself. Like, I
just thought it was really well done, and I'm really
proud of you guys. Thank you, thank you so much.
And I think it's worth saying that Jen and I
both when we thoughts to do this, we both wanted
(47:52):
to do it separately. We had both had the idea
and knew that we needed to do it together. We
knew that each of us individually couldn't have I mean,
I guess we could have but didn't want to do
it on our own. We wanted to do it together,
and I think that it's what it is because we
did it together. I'll just finish with one question that
(48:15):
I've always had that maybe you guys can help with,
which is I've come across people in my life that
have scars from cutting, either on their wrists or ankles.
It's they're usually quite noticeable or sometimes quite noticeable. What
is the best way to when you notice it on
somebody not make them feel seen in that way? Should
(48:37):
you acknowledge it or should you not? I think it's
a really personal feeling. I don't I think that some
people might feel seen by you seeing it acknowledging it,
and others might feel really embarrassed or ashamed of it.
So I don't think there's a one way to do it.
(48:58):
I would err on the side of cat should and
just not say anything. But you know, I think that
you can't make someone feel anything, right. So if you
notice it, you notice it, and there's nothing really you
can do about that. You don't have to call attention
to it, and that person's response is going to be
what theirs is and where they are in their journey
(49:20):
didn't anything to add to that. I also think it's
a very personal thing. I also think though, like letting
people know just like here and there, Hey, I'm here.
If you want to talk about anything, Hey, I'm always
here as a support for you. I also think it
depends like there are certainly people that you notice that
(49:40):
have like old looking scars. If they look old, there
might not be a reason to address. If they look
brand new, I think you can always just ask like, hey,
is there anything going on that you want to share?
You know. I don't think necessarily pointing it out directly
is always helpful, because I do think the cycle of
shame and guilt can perpetuate things. But I always think
(50:01):
it's okay to tell people that you're there to support them,
and if there's ever a time that they want to
talk to you about something, you let them know that.
I don't think there's ever too many times you can
tell someone that you're there for support. I truly don't,
and I think that's really helpful in and of itself,
just so that they know that they're not alone. Well,
that's really helpful. And thank you for also bringing up
the fact that it could be a new scar and
(50:22):
how to address that or scab. So I'm really proud
of you both and Jen specifically on your sobriety. Emily,
I don't know if you have that in your journey,
but you didn't share that, but I know that we
did gloss over that, but wanted to definitely acknowledge that
for you. Jen. Really proud of you both. We're going
to link the workbook below and both of their information
(50:43):
as well, so that if you resonated or want to
reach out to them. They are two amazing light workers
in this world. So thank you both. Thank you so much,
I know, Foye, even when times geththeart and you feel
you're in the cucye, just how beautiful life can be
when you soph in your heart, you can finalist to
(00:27):
live your true cious life. Hey, everybody, welcome back to
the Truthius Life. It's your host, Lisa Ham. And today's
episode is really personal for me because it's with two
girls that I actually went to high school with. Jen
and Emily were two girls in my high school that
have now gone on to become therapists and created an
incredible work book together that aims at helping people heal
(00:52):
from self harming behaviors. Now, the two of them were
not always then these peaceful living people. They actually both
came from chaotic homes and have history of self harm.
They only recently reconnected when one of them went on
a podcast talking about her own self harm and mentioned
that she learned from an older girl. That older girl
(01:12):
happened to be Emily, and Emily reached out to talk
about it, maybe apologize, and they ended up forming a
really deep connection and adding meaning to the world by
way of this amazing workbook. In this conversation, which is
very open, myself included opening up about things in high
school that my subconscious conveniently forgot. We talk about topics
(01:36):
such as self harm, and I want to make sure
that anybody who's in that place is well aware before
entering this episode. If anybody listening is thinking of self
harming or is, I want to let you know that
you can text connect for free twenty four seven, which
provides you with twenty four seven crisis counseling and healthy
coping mechanisms. A conversation is really beautiful. You could really
(02:00):
see that the two of them have shifted their lives entirely.
And I say it in this episode, but their complete
inspirations to me as to what you came from doesn't
always have to be your reality. They have worked so
hard and diligently on themselves, learning new coping mechanisms and
creating lives that truly support the people that they want
(02:20):
to be, and I think that that really comes through.
I'm going to link below their workbook. It's called a
Well Mined Space Workbook, a Guide for Self Discovery and Healing.
It's really a fantastic way to dive inward, get to
know yourself, get to know your own triggers, and put
safety plans in place for any places that you or
someone you know might fall victim to harming themselves. This
(02:43):
conversation is so eye opening because a lot of the
things we think we know about what we do as
people actually has deeper psychology and physiological reasoning, and the
two of them beautifully display that for us. So proud
of you, Jen and Emily. Thank you for coming on
on the Truth is Life and for live your truthiest lives.
This conversation is incredibly powerful. Let's jump in. Hello, Jen
(03:08):
and Emily, Welcome to The Truthiest Life. Thank you, Hi, Hi,
I'm so excited to be with you, guys. For a
little bit of background, the three of us went to
high school together. Emily and I are the same grade.
Jen is a year younger, So this is the first
time I'm probably speaking to both of you since high school.
(03:28):
Is that possible? Probably? Yeah, definitely. That's frightening, just because
we all look at the exact same But really, I
can't believe that it's been so long neither. It's wild.
So the two of you have a really interesting story. Well,
one of you walk us back into how you recently reconnected.
(03:51):
So we were each on another podcast. You were on
also the former high school teacher, and we each told
our own stories and Jen had mentioned in her story
something about me. She didn't name me, but when she
said it, I was like, oh, okay, I think that's me.
(04:12):
And I reached out to her about it and she
was like, Yep, it was you. And we started talking
more and connecting, you know, reminiscing about our past relationship
and what actually connected us together. Yeah. It was actually
really weird because when I recorded that podcast, I got
(04:33):
really nervous because the question was like, did anybody teach
you about self harm? And obviously I didn't mention Emily's name,
but when she heard it back, she messaged me on
Instagram and she and I hadn't spoken and probably a
few years, and she had asked, is that me? And
I was like yes, But you know, we did this
whole back and forth and it just kind of then
(04:55):
like reconnected us. And ironically we have very similar history
since high school. So it was just like a really
cool thing to come together after that and really discuss
like what happened with the two of us together and
fast forward to what led to this conversation is the
two of you are now working together and came out
with this amazing workbook. But before we jump there, just
(05:18):
to give a little bit more background into the stories
that connected you both, a teacher of ours in our
high school started a podcast and he brings people on
to share their high school experience under his assumption that
high school matters, meaning what happens in high school has
an impact on your life in some way. And I
listened to both of your episodes knowing both of you. Emily,
(05:41):
maybe you a little bit better than Jen, but I
feel like I knew you by the end of high school. Jen,
you know from cheerleading, I think, and some other things.
But what I didn't know is like who they were
individually at home, and that's the part that they kind
of shared. They shared about struggling with depression and self harm,
(06:02):
and it was so eye opening. I don't know, you know,
like these are two people that I knew really well,
and Jen, I definitely didn't know anything that was going
on in your life. Emily, I knew a little bit,
but just high school, the magnitude of the things that
we go through as young adults by ourselves, I forgot
or I didn't know, and I just it was so
(06:25):
brave of you both to share those really dark parts
of your lives that you know you got through so beautifully.
Thanking you. It was a weird experience because I had
not ever, really obviously with close friends, had spoken about
some of these things. But even a lot of my
close friends when they listened to the podcast, had no
(06:45):
idea what was going on. Right and in high school,
I think I can speak for myself, but I think
we have this idea that like everyone knows what's happening
with us, right, like I wear my emotions on my sleeve,
or I feel like sometimes this self absorbed like everyone
knows everything, or like I'm the only one going through
something right. Sometimes there's like no in between. And so
(07:07):
a lot of my close friends were like, I had
no idea that you were going through X, Y and Z.
I knew certain things but not others. So it was
a really interesting experience to really disclose it in a
very open way. I remember when you said that some
of the self harming techniques you I believe you said
learned from an older girl who turned out to be emily.
(07:27):
But in that moment, like people came to mind who
that could have been. But it was not Emily. Again,
I knew Emily, and although I knew there were difficult
things happening in your home, you're still a very like
light person. You always had a laugh and a smile,
and that wasn't faked. So it was very surprising for me,
somebody who I think it's also like intuitive and sad
(07:49):
that I didn't know that you know, Emily, that you
were going through those things. To your point, I think
you said it so well, Jen, like you either think
that nobody else could understand or everybody just knows and
it's the same. And I think I fall into that
camp of like we're all going through it, but then
like we're not. We're all actually having very different experiences.
That's so true, And I think it's interesting for me
(08:12):
to hear you say that my smile was genuine, because
reflecting on it, my first reaction was, well, it wasn't,
But actually it was right like in those moments when
I was in school or socializing around people, it was genuine.
It was a smile that I felt. But then when
(08:34):
I would go home and I was alone with my
thoughts and I was alone with myself, that's when all
of that sadness came forward. That's when all of that
struggle to deal with what my home environment was, what
my inner world was, really I couldn't ignore it. DN
learned from Emily. Emily, did you learn from somebody else? No,
(08:57):
not in a conscious way. So I remember the first
time I self harmed. I was in ninth grade, and
essentially I think I had gotten into a fight with
my mom or something like that. But I remember that
the feeling that birthed the self harm for me was anger.
(09:18):
Do you know when you feel anger in like that
physical way and you just need that physical release of
it for whatever reason? In that moment what I went to.
My tweezers were sitting on my desk or vanity, and
I saw them and I grabbed them and I cut
(09:38):
myself with them. And that was the first time I
ever cut. And it really felt like this instinctual, visceral
place of knowing I needed to get out from inside
my body what was happening, but I didn't have effective
tools to do that. I didn't have any tools at
(09:59):
that point. I found this tool in that moment. So
it's interesting to realize that I didn't actually learn it
from someone again, not necessarily unconscious level, but it just
came from inside of me. Thank you so much for
sharing that. Again, it's hard for me to hear these
things just because I was there ish and to know
(10:21):
what happens after that three o'clock bell goes on and
we go home and school is hard for so many reasons.
But at the same time, for a lot of people,
it's their safe place. It's away from our family drama.
We tuck it all away, both of you. From my memory.
You know, we're popular girls that had girlfriends or boyfriends,
and you guys, weren't, like you didn't go to school,
(10:43):
and you were socially isolated, I guess in my mind.
So just to know that like that was maybe some
sort of a safe place, but when you get home
into the reality of like of your life, it's hard
for me to hear. But I think when you said
primal emotion and anger right like it's so real and
I so vividly felt that you said like itching to
(11:03):
crawl out of your own body. I don't know if
that perfectly describes anxiety or some other human experience that
has another name, but I've certainly been there, and I
assume our listeners have been in there and it's in
those moments you'll do anything to get out. It's so true. Yeah,
I think you're right that that is for me. Also,
(11:24):
the experience of anxiety, like this discomfort of being in
your own skin and just wanting to shift whatever is happening.
And yeah, especially when you're young and you don't have
certain role models to teach you the healthy ways to
deal with those feelings, because we all feel them. It's
not unique to experience anxiety, it's how we cope with them.
(11:47):
So yeah, I think that is exactly exactly right. And
add anger into it. I feel like that's really like
the recipe, just kind of as we're saying it. You
guys are the therapist, so pull me back if I'm wrong.
But it's like you've got anxiety that kind of makes
you like spin in circles an itch and feel uncomfortable.
But I guess, since we're all being honest, I had
one moment in my entire life that I considered self
(12:09):
harm or attempted and I don't know, it didn't feel
real enough compared to your story, but the icing on
the cake there was anger. It was about of anger
on top of all the feelings. Of stuckness that I
was like, Okay, this is something, and I know it
didn't I mean I didn't get so far because there
was no release after that. It was not deep or
(12:32):
anything like that. But the desire too was and that
doesn't invalidate the experience. You know, you still felt and
went through all of that, you know, and it still
is self harm. And I'm glad it wasn't worse, and
I'm glad it didn't you know, develop into anything. It
was still you know, your experience of that. So the
two of you at some point connected in high school
(12:54):
and Emily, what was it like to share that with
somebody else, to first of all, admit that you do that,
or to like teach. I never shared with Jen with
the intention of teaching her. I want to make sure
that I'm clear about that. For me and for most
people who self harm, it's all about self destruction, right,
You're not looking to be aggressive outwardly towards anyone else.
(13:16):
And so when Jen and I connected, you know, I
knew her family life was very similar to mine. We
both were products of divorce, We both had parents that
weren't always present for us. And I remember, like one
and I think this was the moment Jen was in
my car. We were driving around, we were listening to music,
(13:38):
and I just felt connected to her and I shared
with her when I was experiencing and I think, and Jen,
maybe you remember also, but I think in that moment
you had also been sharing with me certain things that
you were going through, and it was just this unfortunate
but beautiful connection. That makes sense. Yeah, I would agree.
(14:01):
I would agree wholeheartedly. It was never and like I
do want to be very clear about this, It was
never Emily called me. It was like, Jen, look at
this thing I'm doing, you should do it too, kind
of thing like it works, you know. It was never
like that. It was very much that is the distinct
memory in your Yellow Extera. I remember it vividly. I
(14:22):
remember vivid like, but we were probably both just sharing openly.
And I think it really was in passing of like
you mentioning that you've cut before. When Emily reached out
to me after the podcast came out, I wanted to
make it like very clear to her that no matter
who it was, I could have heard it on the radio,
(14:43):
I could have heard it in a song, I could
have watched in a movie. Seen it in a commercial,
heard some random people on the street talking about cutting.
At that point in my life, it was just something
that stuck in my head. Whether it came from Emily
or not, it was something that I wanted, I needed
at the time to find something to numb the emotional pain, right,
(15:04):
and physical pain can sometimes really numb the emotional pain.
Not to mention the complexities of you know, when you
bleed and endorphins and all of that and how it
literally naturally numbs your body. But it was just one
of those where Emily had mentioned it and it sounded
good to me kind of thing, and that's where it
(15:25):
went from there. Well, I mean, it's just such an
incredible story how the podcast kind of created this whole
circuit back to each other and where we grew up
was a really strange place. I think if anybody ever
listens to the podcast high School Matters, that comes through
you know, it's a place where everybody looks like they're
doing okay, and unlike a lot of like wealthy towns
(15:50):
that surrounded us, Like, there was a lot of drama
and real drama, not high school drama. There was called
and bomb threats by the older boys, that like during
our four years together and you know, Jen one year
below us, Like the magnitude of the things that went
on in our high school, Like you could just tell
(16:12):
that things were not okay in a lot of the
homes outside of school, even though they presented in shiny
cars and expensive cars and all the things. It's so true.
And if I'm being fully transparent and vulnerable here for
me when I write in high school, and I obviously
(16:32):
came came from the same place, but I was jealous
of you, Lisa, Like I would look to you and
look at your life and your family and your friends
and what you looked like, and felt like, oh, I'm
not good enough, right, Like that's that's what you're supposed
to be, right, But the reality is even then, and
(16:53):
I hope this is okay to say, I knew that
it's our life wasn't perfect inside your home, but it
was about what I projected onto that, right. What I
my insecurity is that I just ended up projecting onto you.
It could have been anyone, you know, and I think
that's a lot of people in high school, and probably
a lot of people who look at the high school
(17:15):
we went to and the people in it. Yeah, I
think that a lot of people probably assume a lot
about me, and you're one of the people that have
actually probably been inside my home to see more than
you know, met the eye there. So I don't know
(17:36):
what memories you have about all of that, but I
appreciate you sharing that. You know, and then I was
had those same thoughts about somebody else, you know, like
it's things were certainly not okay in so many aspects
of my life, and I just I want to keep
the focus on you guys today, but I share that
because everything that looks perfect on the outside isn't or
(17:59):
look better even if it's not perfect. Suddenly, before we
jumped on, though, you did say that you wanted to call,
you know, if it was okay to mention some of
the things that we did that you remembered and see
how I felt about them. And I said, yes, you
could say it, but I don't really remember off top
of my head, I might remember when you say it,
So what sort of things are you remembering? So the
(18:20):
thing that stands out most to me when I remember
some of the things that we did was being in
health class together, I think in ninth grade, and we
used to have this folder that we would pass back
and forth to each other. I don't know if you
remember that, and it was definitely men. I don't know
what was in the fault. So we used to pass
(18:44):
back and forth these cutouts from magazines of like inspiration
of body types, and then we would like talk about
what we ate and what we didn't eat and share
our food logs. Essentially in that health class, you know.
And I maybe went outside of that, I don't really remember,
(19:04):
but it's that being in that class, sitting next to
each other and passing the folders back and forth made me.
That's what I remember. I definitely remember something stemming from
health class. And I don't know what they were teaching
us in health that stimulated that within us. And I mean,
I'm very open about my history of disordered eating and
body image stuff, but my memories around not to say
(19:26):
they didn't exist in high school. But I don't remember
what it looked like so much as when I got
to college. But I do remember attempts to not eat period,
Like it was like we just want to be skinny.
Let's just like attempt to not eat and similar to
the self harm, like I was never any good at
it quote unquote, So I never had anorexia because or
(19:46):
had weight changes or anything. And I was already a
thin girl, like you said, mentioned like my body type
is thin to begin with. But I think it's worth
mentioning perhaps that the early two thousands were were very
strange in the sense that we celebrated bodies that looked
anorexic or we're anorexic, like that's what we saw, and
(20:09):
maybe we still do in some capacities. But Mary Kate
and Ashley or Mary Kate at the time, like she
had that anorexic I think she was on her ex
and we celebrated that that look in the media, and
we didn't call each other out for not eating, like
we pushed each other to not and I don't know
why or and maybe that comes from both of us
(20:32):
coming from you know, shaky homes Emily, but so not Okay, Yeah,
no it's not. But we didn't know any different. Yeah,
we didn't know. We didn't know how bad it was
what we were doing or hurting each other by by
creating a bond over it exactly, which is similar to
me and jem right, same thing. There's this right here
(20:54):
over self harm and it, and it is strange to me.
To me, there was something about that time, I'm connecting
with you over you know, the body image stuff, connecting
with you Jen over self harm that obviously is destructive,
but I needed the connection right, like it felt I
used to connect with someone because everywhere else was lonely,
(21:16):
and I think there were a few of us in
you know, again Jen's tied to leave you out. But
in our grade, you know, we were so grade segmented
at the time that like I only really knew what
was going on, but there, you know, I felt like
I wasn't part of the quote unquote cutting club, but
I know that there were a bunch of girls in
our grade who were doing that that would hide it
under their sweatpants. We used to put slits in our
(21:37):
sweatpants and they'd put it there, and it was just
I was laughing at the slit in our sweatpants. That
in the fashion, not the cutting. But some of those
girls were also really popular and like fast with boys,
and that too made the behavior seem a little bit
more normalized because the cool girls were doing it. This
wasn't the emotionally retreated people who looked like they didn't
(22:02):
have any friend. It was the popular people were doing
this in our grade or in our grade, Emily Jen,
was it different in your grade? No, the eating, the
eating stuff, the body image stuff very much in my
grade as well, very much encouraging each other to absolutely
not have a regular bagel, have to scoop it out,
have iced coffee for your meal, like, very much body focus.
(22:26):
From what I know, and obviously I have not talked
to every single person in my grade, but I don't
know personally anybody else in my grade who's self harmed,
So I'm really not sure what was going on in
my grade. I'm sure that there were other things, but
body image was definitely a huge part. But really Emily
was the person that I had connected with, not even
(22:48):
just to clarify, not even connecting around cutting in general
and self harm, but connecting around mental health and where
we were and how we were doing and how we
were not doing very well and not having support. But
I think that then takes every shape, right because, like
you know, depression and anxiety, disordered eating, self harm, they're
all in the category of mental health and how are
(23:09):
we doing and who do we have to talk to? Totally,
So the two of you go on to in the
last year create this amazing workbook, the Well Mined Space Workbook,
A Guide for self discovery and healing. And it's pretty
amazing now that we've heard your stories of how far
the two of you have come individually and collectively, both
(23:30):
therapists with your own businesses helping others, and when I
look at both of you, I'm also seeing like deeply
peaceful people, which is I really don't use this word
a lot, and hopefully if you listen to this podcast,
like you know, I don't use this word a lot.
Truly inspiring, maybe because I know you guys from you know,
and more than knowing you guys, I know you're like
(23:51):
your energies. Like I knew who you were then and
what it felt like to be in your presence, and
now I know what it feels like to be in
your presence now. And I wouldn't describe you guys dark then,
but there's a relaxing, calmingness around you that you've created
because you certainly both didn't come from that, so that's
(24:12):
just amazing. And then the workbook itself, I thought I
could just start by asking you you you know you
say a guide for self discovering and healing, and that
word is an interesting one to me, so I'm curious
what healing means to both of you and why it
was included. I think a big part of why the
workbook is so special to both Emily and myself is
(24:35):
because we didn't necessarily have something like this when we
were going through our really I would call my times
like very dark times, but we didn't have that, And
I don't think I really ever found healing per se
truly actually until I got clean and sober. Then I
(24:56):
found healing and I found it that way, and for
the past fifteen years of focusing on that, that's where
a lot of my healing came in, and a lot
of it came from like learning from other people and
getting support in ways that I didn't have when I
was younger. And I think that's why a huge part
of this workbook we really wanted to create like what
would we have wanted when we were at that age,
(25:18):
you know, Like what would I have wanted? What would
like fourteen year old gen have wanted in a workbook?
And like it's even little things of like the cover
of the workbook, we didn't want it to say self harm.
We didn't want it to be blatantly obvious what this
workbook was about, because we want people to feel comfortable
holding it or being out somewhere and like taking it
(25:40):
out of their backpack or something. You know. We wanted
it to be what I would have wanted when I
was younger, and what Emily would have as well. So
I think that's like another part of it that we
don't really talk about too much, But to me that
was really important. Is this workbook designed for teenagers or
what ages did you have in mind when you created it?
(26:00):
Because I didn't. I actually didn't realize that. So we
don't have necessarily like a very specific age group. I
think because a lot of teenagers do tend to fall
into the category of self harming behaviors. The ideas a
lot of teenagers will hopefully use it, but it's really
for anybody. It's for anybody at any age. But you know,
(26:22):
like when you're in your thirties, you don't necessarily want
to carry around a workbook that says like learn how
to stop cutting, you know, like, no, I want to
carry that around. So it's probably going to target a
lot of adolescents, but we want it to be for everybody.
I love that, but it's so helpful to know that
this is geared towards adolescents, for anybody listening that has
(26:43):
somebody in their life to know that adolescents have no tools,
or we as adolescents had no tools. Maybe it's different
now with the rise of social media and internet access
that we didn't have as teenagers, which makes us sound
really old, but that's the thing where we were so
toolless as lessons and even you know, Emily, going back
to the beginning, and you said, like wanting to get
(27:05):
out of your own skin, like nobody ever said that,
So it felt like such an isolating experience, and nobody
ever talked to us about emotions and what they feel
like in our body and sensations and how they emotions
go through. Like we had no outer education around the
internal experience, which left us tool less, especially in those moments.
(27:27):
And everything feels so much more intense when we're an
adolescent because our whole world is just school and back
school and back school and back whereas where we get
to be an adult, like we can find pockets of
joy in other places, other people, other situations. We can
move if we have to you know, there's so many
things that make us less stuck, so so amazing to
(27:47):
actually say, here, teenager, here's an actual tool. This is
what it feels like in your body when you're triggered,
and here's what you can do instead. So, Emily, what
does the word healing mean to you? Emily, what does
(28:08):
the word healing mean to you? Yeah, So for me,
when I think about healing, I lean towards the space
of the self healing, right, going inside of yourself and
really understanding what's happening in your body so that you
can then take that and use it to inform what
(28:28):
you then do, right, to no longer go towards self harm,
but to choose something that's actually going to be helpful
for your life and actually address the thing that's happening
inside of you. However, also, I think, especially when you're
talking about adolescence, you know, we're talking so much about
(28:49):
being isolated and lonely. It's pulling in community, you know,
And that was another thing we talked about, right, this
connection that we had over something that was harmful. And
so I think in the workbook there's a few exercises
to share outwardly, to write a letter to someone that
(29:09):
you love to let them know what's going on for you,
because it's not something that you can do alone. You know, yes,
you can do the workbook on your own, but the
point for the overall healing, you have to pull people in.
And not everyone has a parent, so the loved one
might be someone else you know might be asking someone
(29:32):
to seek out therapy. It might be a guidance counselor
at school, or a teacher or a friend. But the
point for me is that it's important that through healing
that to be able to heal, you have to pull
in community. Also. I was really impressed with that template
because I think we get the most frozen around our
(29:54):
loved ones and sharing the things that we're doing that
we don't want to be doing anymore or no that
are harmful, whether that's disordered eating, cutting, abusing alcohol, or
using drugs. There's so much shame around those things when
it comes to speaking them in my experience, which is limited,
(30:16):
but when you give a template that says this is
how I can express this to my family who doesn't understand,
you give power to the person by taking so much
of that heavy lifting away that gets stuck in your throat,
but I thought it also shined light on the fact
that your loved ones probably aren't going to understand initially
(30:37):
what the self harm behavior is truly about. What in
your professional opinion or personal lives, whatever you choose to
share either of you, do you find is a typical
response of a loved one responding to finding out that
their daughter, sister, whatever is self harming. So I actually
(31:00):
used the template that we created with one of my clients.
So before we had advertised about it, I had given
certain activities to some of my clients to test out,
like how are they going to like them? Or are
they going to be effective? And the template was actually
exceptionally effective. And I had a client and a parent
(31:22):
sit in with me, and you know, I had given
it to the client prior and said fill it out,
you know, change whatever you need to change, keep whatever
you want to keep. And it was so helpful in
doing exactly that, in lifting this responsibility almost of like
trying to think of what to say, because it's basically
like written for you and it can be adjusted. But
(31:43):
the reaction from my experience in my professional life is
always different than the perceived you know, or the assumed
reaction prior to talking about it. And I have seen
a lot of parents be very open to listening being
you know, given tools when you talk about this, and
(32:05):
then you can give people some tools of what to do,
Like one of our tools in our workbook is our
safety plan. A safety plan is a tool to use
with a parent as well. I have found that parents
are much more understanding, but I do find that there's
a lot of unknowns still when it comes to self
harm that I can't guarantee someone, you know, I'll never
(32:28):
guarantee someone that if they talk about it, it's never
going to happen again. You know. I can't sit down
with a parent and say your you know, kid, disclose this,
It's never going to happen again. That's not true. Most
of these things take a really long time to heal,
and so I think setting more realistic expectations for people
is also one of the things I try to do,
because I don't want anybody to think that this is
(32:49):
like a magic cure all that they talk about at
one time and it goes away. It doesn't. These are
things to work on for months and years sometimes, so
trying to focus on setting those very realistic expectations when
it comes to stopping a specific behavior or like decreasing
the behavior. So I have found the template to be
(33:11):
one of the most effective tools in disclosing self harm.
There is a misconception that I'm familiar with, and I
think in your book you talked about it too, that
self harm, at least in the form of cutting specifically,
is for attention. What would you say to that, Emily,
I actually just recently read something where so many times
(33:34):
people say, oh, they're doing that for attention, right, So,
whether it's cutting or anything else, there's the sense of
it's for attention, but really it's connection seeking, right, And
so if you think of it that way, it's never
for attention. It's one to deal with difficult feelings in
the only way you know how, and it's wanting to connect, right,
(33:59):
Like when you wear something on your body, it's screaming
a message of I'm in pain, and it's not about
the attention of look at me. It's see my pain,
please someone see my pain. It's screaming for help exactly.
You said that so beautifully, I think, and it also
(34:20):
as you were saying it made me think, like, okay,
so is attention a bad thing. Right, we have this
idea they just want attention. They're so attention seeking that
makes themselves centered more important than other people. It's like, no, okay,
maybe it is for attention. Then let's like scale that
back and be like because they need attention and help.
And you know, we're not not laughing at it, but
(34:44):
I think that we need to reframe that the idea
of needing attention also as being a bad thing. And
a lot of the people that need attention are neglect
of attention in their lives where it is deserved and needed,
especially during the formative years where we are still you know,
we might look like many adults as adolescents, but we're
(35:05):
still babies. Exactly. You said exactly what I was thinking.
You know, I classify what I went through as neglect
and that's a form of abuse. And so, yeah, you're right,
I needed attention, but I didn't. I didn't need it
from the people in school before we're seeing it, right,
(35:27):
I needed it from my parents. I needed it from
an adult who could help me deal with what I
was experiencing. Really really well said in the book, you
start by including your own stories. What was the purpose
of that? And I asked that because again, you guys
are not just two people that got together to create
a workbook. You are a therapists, and it's not often
(35:49):
that we hear therapists share their own journey. So what
was it like to share that and why did you so?
We felt like it was really important to be honest
about our experiences one, but also it adds something to
the workbook, right, It adds something for someone who is
(36:10):
going to pick up this workbook and use it to
know that the people who wrote it have been where
they are, who have gone through the same things and
are also on the other side of it. I think
is a really important message to send to the people
who are using it. Beautifully, said Jen. In the beginning,
(36:30):
you were talking about the physiological response of cutting or
when we're injured, and you share about that in the
book too. It really spoke to me. But for anybody
who doesn't understand cutting, whether you know somebody who is
doing that or don't think you do, can you share
what happens when you do cut for people to understand
(36:54):
why it is a coping mechanism, an unsafe one, but
a coping mechanism. Nonetheless, Yeah, absolutely, one of the things
that's really interesting about cutting, but that's kind of very
similar to drug use, is that when you get an
injury on your body, especially like bleeding, obviously, there are
(37:16):
reactions on a physiological level that your body tends to
release endorphins, right, and endorphins are kind of like this
natural numbing effect, trying to like, you know, numb whatever
kind of pain. You know. It's like when people get
really injured, and sometimes they don't even like notice it first, right,
people who may have gotten shot, right, they don't even
notice it first because their adrenaline is so hyped up
(37:37):
and it kind of essentially like numbs everything else, right.
And so in a very similar way that there is
drug seeking behavior in drugs target specific parts of our brain,
cutting does something very similar in that it won I
think pain in general takes physical pain in general takes
our minds off of more emotional mental pain, and then
(38:00):
literally in your body when you're bleeding, your body has
this natural response of adrenaline which then automatically kind of
like numbs other things as well. And so cutting is
like a very interesting we'll call it a coping skill
because it temporarily might work, but typically in the long
run does not end up being all that helpful. In fact,
(38:21):
can be very very harmful, but it does on a
physiological level, it does make you feel a little bit
euphoric or numb in the same way drugs do. I
think also when we talk about healing, when your body
is injured or your body is sick, if it's working properly,
the first thing that it tries to do is to
(38:43):
start the healing process. When you experience in an emotional
pain and you don't know how to heal that, so
you seek out the physical so that your body starts healing.
You experience it everywhere, right, So, yeah, there's the physical
healing of the wound, but there's an emotional relief that
happens in that. Also, I'm going to assume that this
(39:06):
is an addictive behavior that's hard to break, speaking from experience,
would you guys agree, Yes, definitely. It's just something that
I think is really eye opening because I think most
of us can digest that alcohol is addicting, and something
hard happens in our life, we turn to it harming
yourself physical pain as it presents itself, It's hard to
(39:28):
believe that this would be a habit to break. But
now that you've described it as this physiological cascade of
adrenaline that takes the pain away from where it is
in our body, it makes a lot more sense to
me as somebody who never went down that route. Really,
it's so helpful to understand the human experience in that way,
and given that it's so instantaneous, I assume it can
(39:51):
be really hard to break because very few things are
that instantaneous when we're in pain. Sitting with our own
pain right is a really hard task if we're used
to running from it. In your book, you talk about
(40:14):
different coping skills and you label them as harmful, healthy,
and neutral. I believe did I get that right? I
think it's healthy, unhealthy, and neutral. I think we picked right.
I think healthy, unhealthy and neutral neutral being in the middle.
Can you explain the difference between the three coping techniques
and how having these on hand can help somebody in
(40:35):
those heightened sense of I need to get out of
my body to think about what's the best thing for me.
To your point before right, you said there aren't a
lot of things that are going to provide immediate relief
to the emotional pain, And I would say that pretty
much anything that provides immediate relief to the emotional pain
is going to fall under the unhealthy category, right, cutting, binge, eating, drugs,
(41:01):
and alcohol. You could fill in lots of things there,
So I would I would say that any anything that's
the immediate and self destructive would be the unhealthy neutral.
I would classify more under like the zoning out, so
scrolling on your phone, watching TV, playing video games, yourself,
(41:26):
distracting yourself, right, exactly right, And so then the healthy
ones are going to be the ones that aren't so easy,
that aren't so quick. Right, it's daily meditation practice, it's breathing,
it's journaling, calling somebody, the hoping skills that often make
(41:46):
us more vulnerable, that force us to sit with the
feelings and not push them out. I would also say
to add on neutral, because I think neutral is wearing.
It can get a little bit murky, can get a
little bit confusing. Something that I think in particular falls
into neutral. Are some of these other techniques that you
(42:09):
might discuss with someone instead of them. It's almost like
a harm reduction technique of instead of cutting, snap a
rubber band on your wrist, hold an ice cube for
a period of time. It's still a harmful in a
way behavior, but not as harmful as cutting. Right, because
any object that you use, obviously there's always a risk
(42:31):
you hit something incorrectly, you hit something a vein, it
might be dirty, you might get an infection. So something
like snapping a rubber band on your wrist or holding
an ice cube is still on a level of harmful,
but not as harmful, if that makes sense, but still
providing a sensation, Especially when somebody is trying to wean right,
(42:52):
it can be so hard from having this as your
vice and then saying okay, meditate right, like that's a leap, Yes,
that's a leap. And it also typically people won't do
it right because we're looking for some other physical right,
You're obviously looking for something physical, and so to say
like just so cut just like maybe go read a
book or something like that, they're not going to give
(43:13):
the same effect. So we want to kind of replace
it with a in certain instance it is with a
less harmful option. So that's where I would say, like
mutral also falls in right, And it's so helpful to
really think about that because, like we talked about, the
physiological response of cutting is the adrenaline, So to take
that away from somebody and then have them sit with
(43:34):
their emotions unlikely to cause lasting change would be my guest.
So you know, obviously anybody who is cutting beyond the
workbook needs to be working with a professional to go
through these changes. But my hope is in sharing this
is not only to promote the workbook, which is such
a great tool, but also give some insight into the
(43:55):
self harm mindset if you have never been there, or
if you are there, to know that you're certainly not alone.
In your book as well, you talk about a safety
plan and helping readers create one. I think you mentioned
it as well, really or Gin, But briefly, what is
a safety plan? Yeah, a safety plan is a really
(44:17):
good tool that you can literally have either like a
print out of like I usually print out safety plans
for my clients when we create them together. And so
the point of a safety plan is to start to
learn what your warning signs are that like, something may
be brewing right in this instance that you might have
a desire to cut right, So what are some of
the warning signs that you notice? Do you start to
(44:38):
get intrusive thoughts, do you start to feel something in
your body, do you start to withdraw from friends or
there are things that you can notice and you write
them down so that you can actually have this in
front of you. Are the things that you notice that
you can then pause and say, what are some things
I can do right now? Can I call this person?
(44:58):
Can I go place? And so we write down because
when you're in crisis it's really hard to think clearly.
We write down people their phone numbers, places that you
can go to distract yourself, things that you can do.
I always include the number for your local crisis services obviously,
numbers obviously for like nine on one, your closest hospital,
(45:19):
things like that, so that when you're in a crisis,
you don't really have to think too much. Because when
we're in crisis, we have a hard time thinking clearly.
So if it's all down on paper, your parent, your
loved one can go to your safety plan and say,
what are some things that you can try right now?
Right We include coping skills on there as well. What
are some things you can do? Take a walk, go
(45:39):
to a coffee shop, go to a record store, call
your friend, things like that, so that it's literally all
written out for you. You don't even need to really
think about it at that point. Well, I think that's
that's brilliant and just hopping a little further, you talk
about triggers in your life, and you know, I think
when I think back to high school, like there was
no awareness to a trigger. It was just like I
(46:00):
feel really bad and my body make it col way,
like we had no insight around what came before. So
I loved how you specified external and internal triggers and
give people something to recognize that something comes before the
inward explosion. And the more you study yourself and get
to know that, the more you can stop the train
(46:25):
wreck that might feel inevitable in other circumstances. So I
think you guys just did such a wonderful job, and
it's really hard to work together. So I think that's
also really cool and speaks to maybe your connection to it,
how connected you guys are not because you know, just
from like a really like soul level, you guys are
really connected and it came out so beautifully. Is there
(46:47):
anything else about the workbook that you want to share
that we missed? We are going to try and make
this workbook into print, and right now this is an
ebook and Okay, are going to print it because we
both love the idea of actual something you can hold
in your hands. So tuned because we are going to
(47:08):
print it, that'll be awesome. I agree, a journal for
me has to be something I can write in. And
I think that a lot of people would love to
be able to gift this as well to those in need,
whether it's a parent to help a child, or a
friend even I mean, like I said, it's written, it's
not geared towards. When I read it, it didn't read
like this is for just adolescents. It read towards. This
(47:31):
could be helpful for anybody, even if you don't self harm,
just to get to know triggers, have a safety plan
in place, just start thinking about about yourself. Like, I
just thought it was really well done, and I'm really
proud of you guys. Thank you, thank you so much.
And I think it's worth saying that Jen and I
both when we thoughts to do this, we both wanted
(47:52):
to do it separately. We had both had the idea
and knew that we needed to do it together. We
knew that each of us individually couldn't have I mean,
I guess we could have but didn't want to do
it on our own. We wanted to do it together,
and I think that it's what it is because we
did it together. I'll just finish with one question that
(48:15):
I've always had that maybe you guys can help with,
which is I've come across people in my life that
have scars from cutting, either on their wrists or ankles.
It's they're usually quite noticeable or sometimes quite noticeable. What
is the best way to when you notice it on
somebody not make them feel seen in that way? Should
(48:37):
you acknowledge it or should you not? I think it's
a really personal feeling. I don't I think that some
people might feel seen by you seeing it acknowledging it,
and others might feel really embarrassed or ashamed of it.
So I don't think there's a one way to do it.
(48:58):
I would err on the side of cat should and
just not say anything. But you know, I think that
you can't make someone feel anything, right. So if you
notice it, you notice it, and there's nothing really you
can do about that. You don't have to call attention
to it, and that person's response is going to be
what theirs is and where they are in their journey
(49:20):
didn't anything to add to that. I also think it's
a very personal thing. I also think though, like letting
people know just like here and there, Hey, I'm here.
If you want to talk about anything, Hey, I'm always
here as a support for you. I also think it
depends like there are certainly people that you notice that
(49:40):
have like old looking scars. If they look old, there
might not be a reason to address. If they look
brand new, I think you can always just ask like, hey,
is there anything going on that you want to share?
You know. I don't think necessarily pointing it out directly
is always helpful, because I do think the cycle of
shame and guilt can perpetuate things. But I always think
(50:01):
it's okay to tell people that you're there to support them,
and if there's ever a time that they want to
talk to you about something, you let them know that.
I don't think there's ever too many times you can
tell someone that you're there for support. I truly don't,
and I think that's really helpful in and of itself,
just so that they know that they're not alone. Well,
that's really helpful. And thank you for also bringing up
the fact that it could be a new scar and
(50:22):
how to address that or scab. So I'm really proud
of you both and Jen specifically on your sobriety. Emily,
I don't know if you have that in your journey,
but you didn't share that, but I know that we
did gloss over that, but wanted to definitely acknowledge that
for you. Jen. Really proud of you both. We're going
to link the workbook below and both of their information
(50:43):
as well, so that if you resonated or want to
reach out to them. They are two amazing light workers
in this world. So thank you both. Thank you so much,
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.