February 3, 2025 • 22 mins
In this previously un-published inaugural episode of the podcast, Becca introduces her occasional co-host Madeline Acri, a friend and neighbor. Their candid conversation delves into the reasons behind Becca's sensitivity and the importance of curiosity in their friendship. Highlights include their experiences with emotional intelligence, the struggle with internal validation, and Becca's unique approach to understanding her body's signals. They humorously discuss airplane noise disturbances and reflect on the significance of authentic self-expression. The episode sets the stage for future discussions on health, personal growth, and emotional well-being.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Golden Girl, a space where we dive deep into health, healing, connection, and community.
(00:07):
I'm your host, Becca Golden, and this podcast is all about sharing and documenting my journey.
Each episode, we'll discuss topics like health and wellness, what I'm learning in therapy,
work-life balance, relationships, community, and all the ways I strive for more aliveness and presence every day.
Let's dive in.
Hi.
(00:29):
Hi.
Welcome to the podcast.
Hello.
We need to tell everyone who you are.
Okay.
Actually, I didn't even say the plan of the fact that you'll be here with me, so maybe I'll just say that.
Sure.
Or you can also say, sometimes you'll be by yourself, but sometimes I'll be here to facilitate.
Okay.
Yeah, that's good.
My goal in having you here is to facilitate conversation.
(00:51):
Great.
I wanted to have a friend here with me who I completely feel like myself around.
Great.
You definitely make me feel comfortable being myself.
Good.
And you're also just a very interesting person.
You have great points of view.
You're open-minded and you're always so interested in everything, and I love that.
Thank you.
So tell everyone who you are.
My name is Madeline Acre.
(01:12):
I am Becca's friend and neighbor.
We met in 2017, more or less.
We don't have to get into the story of how we met.
That could be for another day.
That could be for another day.
But the fact that we're neighbors now is really nice.
I love that.
You know, I think the reason that I try to be someone that's easy to talk to is because
(01:34):
it's easy to get stuck in your own ways and to be surrounded by people that have a similar
point of view, but I really want to come into conversations or want to enter life with a
sense of curiosity.
Curiosity and being excited about things that are maybe other people would consider minutia,
is fun.
Being excited about things that are small or things that are random is fun.
(01:56):
So I try to seek that out when I can.
I think that comes out loud and clear from you.
Since the very first day of our friendship, you have always approached our conversations
with curiosity, for sure.
I always have some random thing that I'm up to, and I've never felt judged.
I've always just felt like you're curious.
(02:18):
I think that's great, so good.
You're doing it.
Great.
Well, I think curiosity is not judgmental at all.
Being judgmental is very different than being curious, and I think being curious is much
more inquisitive and fun and a more effective way to engage with people and to see eye to
eye with people.
And I think if I had one funny Becca comment to make, it's the fact that you asked me to
(02:42):
roast you on your birthday.
There are many things that people would say, like, oh, I've never had a friend that does
XYZ, but definitely have I never met someone that said, will you roast me for your birthday?
And I did, and it was very fun.
And it's just, I don't know why I find it so amusing and humorous that you actively want
people to say things that are sometimes in bad taste, which is just bizarre, but also
(03:09):
very amusing.
The reason that I asked you to roast me and the people that I asked to roast me is because
there are people who I feel see me for who I am.
I would never ask people to roast me that I feel misunderstood by.
There are plenty of people in my life that I feel like I have to explain myself, explain
myself again, and I still don't quite feel like they're grasping what I'm intending.
(03:31):
And that's fine, but I would never ask those people to roast me.
But if you say things about me that are insulting, they're not insulting, it's just comments
about me.
I think I'm roastable.
I think it was a funny thing.
It was funny.
Well, and I think even more funny was the fact that the roast that I gave you was because
I was on the close friends Instagram experience.
(03:52):
I roasted a lot about your bodily functions and the way you talk about your bodily functions
and the fact that everyone has physical experiences, but the way that you talked about it was just
so different.
And I think it's funny, but I think that it's your life.
(04:13):
And that's how you're sharing it.
And I think that it was still a good experience for all of us to see it.
And I think even though I find humor in the way that you're sharing, it is good that you're
sharing it.
And there's a lot of interesting things that people can take out of these tidbits.
And even the fact that people left your birthday knowing that there's a follicular and alludial
phase and never knew what that was before is a good thing.
(04:33):
It is a good thing.
And we're going to talk all about that.
That's the point of the podcast is like, let's take the close friend story and turn it into
a everybody story.
And I also feel privileged to be part of this podcast because in a lot of ways I often feel
disconnected.
It's going to sound too harsh, but sometimes disconnected from my body.
(04:54):
I don't feel very strongly sometimes or I've waves of emotion come occasionally.
I don't experience waves of emotion very frequently, but I feel like you're experiencing waves
of emotion many times on a daily basis.
And so witnessing that from you is intriguing to me because it's something that is more
foreign to my life experience, but it is something that I am definitely curious about because
(05:20):
it's not something you can manufacture.
It just happens.
I mean, you can't manufacture it, but it's taken work for me to get to this point, which
is a funny thing to say because the emotion is like an emotional crisis.
I mean, crying on literally the last time when I was having my...
It was not a great day.
When you came over, I was actually crying on the floor like immobile.
(05:42):
I was not okay, but yes, I worked really hard to get to that point.
Because think about in 2017, the version of me you knew then or like even just when I
moved into the house, like I didn't feel anything.
I would intellectualize all of my feelings.
And those are topics that I would love to cover on episodes because it's taken me so
(06:03):
much learning about my nervous system and therapy to get in touch with physical bodily
sensations rather than just naming the emotion and explaining why it might be there, taking
that narrative away from it and just like, where am I feeling this in my body?
And the first few times my therapist asked me that, I was like, I don't.
Like, what do you mean?
(06:24):
Yeah.
Am I supposed to just pick something?
And we would go through that exercise.
We'd be like, I kind of sense you getting emotional.
And I was like, oh, am I?
And I was, but I'd like teach myself how to stop suppressing all this, not to say that
you suppress it or anybody else.
I'd also learned that I'm very sensitive.
But I think that's a good point.
(06:44):
Maybe we are all more sensitive and we don't know.
Suppressing is maybe the wrong word.
We're not suppressing it intentionally, but perhaps we're suppressed unintentionally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a lot of times, I mean, I would say it's a combination of things.
It could be your body's way of protecting you or it could be things that you were taught.
Like, when I think about the times that I was little and I would be crying, my mom,
(07:07):
her instinct was, oh, my daughter is crying.
I must cheer up my daughter.
My child is in pain.
I must make it better.
So if I were crying, she would tell me all the good things to look forward to.
Like, oh, it's okay, honey.
Like we're going to go get milkshakes or don't worry, we're going to go home and you can play
with your toys.
I think her instinct was tears mean pain, pain, bad.
(07:31):
Like that's a cry in the brain.
Make it stop.
So I was never taught it's okay to cry.
That must have been really scary.
Like are you scared?
That's okay.
It can be scary to feel this way sometimes.
There was no outlet to just cry.
And a lot of times, even now, I just need to cry and I don't even know why.
There isn't a way to rationalize it, but an outlet to release those emotions is so important.
(07:55):
A lot of times, it's not something that we're taught and it's not usually for any bad reason.
It's just because nobody's taught this stuff.
So yes, it's taken a lot of work for me to allow myself to cry constantly.
Good.
But it's been such a release.
Good.
And I'm proud of myself for it.
And another observation I have is you mentioned the way you were when we met is different
(08:17):
than the way you are today.
But the funny thing is, I was very oblivious.
Or many people didn't realize the way that you felt then is so different than the way
you feel today.
Like we were just friends and we hung out and did stuff.
And I didn't really think about your deep well-being on a daily basis.
I just thought things were fine.
Fine.
But what does that even mean?
(08:39):
I didn't know if I had to ask you deeply how you were doing.
We were also acquainted, really.
We weren't super good friends.
So I didn't know if I had to delve into those things.
But even with our close friends, it's hard to know.
Know what that looks like.
What being well or feeling good or being suppressed.
Like we may never know how other people are acting.
(09:00):
I think it's because of how I feel around you.
Okay, hang on.
Let me switch.
Wait.
When I was enjoying my moment of silence, I couldn't help but think, oh, there's no
airplane flying over this house right now.
So silent.
There have been a few.
I didn't mention them earlier.
I figure.
The airplanes have gotten better.
(09:22):
Good.
We can tell the story of the airplanes.
Oh, the airplanes are going to have an entire episode.
The airplanes don't need an entire episode.
Yes, they definitely do.
The airplane thing, I think, is one of the best in a nutshell Becca situations because
tell it now, we're not going to do a whole episode.
We should do it now because I already am going to cut out like so much of what you talked
(09:45):
about.
So the airplanes.
So we live three minutes apart from each other biking distance, which is 21 seconds.
And 21 seconds.
We are both on the same flight path.
And one day this was in the heat of the summer, I want to say.
So let's say a few months ago, I get a text from you saying, hey, have you noticed any
(10:09):
noises from the air of traffic lately?
No, can't say I have.
The air traffic seems as usual today, thanks for asking why.
And you said it's been very noisy.
I am disturbed by the audible sounds coming from the airplanes lately and I don't know
(10:30):
what to do about it.
So in typical Becca fashion, you took matters into your own hands and emailed Austin Bergstrom
International Airport, contact me and inquired about the flight path or what may be causing
such a disturbance.
And my other favorite part of the story is you got a response, but it felt canned.
(10:55):
The response, which you sent on your close friend story.
I don't have a ton of AI exposure.
I intentionally don't seek out chat GPT to solve my life's problems.
However, the answer that you got from ABIA's contact page felt like a chat GPT answer to
(11:18):
how can I respond to this inquiry?
It was 100% chat GPT.
Yeah, it probably was.
It was probably the most chat GPT answer I've ever seen.
Yeah, and I like that your dad had also said the same thing.
So I felt like we were on the same wavelength, pun intended.
And I also liked that you had written down and looked into the sky the time of day and
(11:44):
the airplane make and model, whatever to verify that you weren't psychotic.
There were in fact basically a plane a minute for hours.
It was a plane a minute for hours.
However, I wasn't hearing any of them.
So this is just such a funny thing of like these planes were in fact.
(12:07):
It's quiet now.
It's not that bad.
It's quiet now.
This way.
Some of them make whale noises.
I mean, I do hear it.
That was pretty quiet.
It's an airplane passing overhead.
That one was pretty quiet.
It didn't disrupt us.
It did not at all.
That was just one.
But when you hear it every minute.
(12:28):
It's disruptive.
Every minute and they're usually a lot louder.
It was driving me insane.
The fact that you were able to verify the insanity by writing down each interaction with these
airplanes really did help cement that they were passing overhead.
But the fact that I just went out with my life and didn't hear them ever also is kind
(12:49):
of funny.
I felt like I was losing my mind.
I was very well aware that to bring this up made me sound like a crazy person.
I was like, of all things to happen, there are airplanes flying overhead too loudly
too often now.
That sounds like I'm losing my mind.
(13:10):
That's like, okay, maybe we need to have an intervention with Becca.
Maybe we need to check her into a facility.
The proof is in the pudding though.
But I've actually, I talked a lot to my therapist about this because I have trouble with gas
lighting myself and invalidating my own experience.
I do that all the time.
I'm working on it.
But I've been trying to not gas light myself.
(13:33):
I would love to get to a point one day where I wouldn't have had to write it all down to
validate that it was as bad as I thought.
Because the reality is that if I felt like it was too many airplanes, who's to say that
that's not true?
Because I am invalidating that, which I did.
And so then I wrote out, like every time I heard it, I wrote down the time and the airline
(13:59):
because for one thing I wanted to figure out which airlines were, which planes were making
the whale noises.
Did you figure it out?
Spirit and United.
And I have a...
I heard it here first.
I have a United flight tomorrow.
But like I just, I was like, I'm going crazy.
This is...
But I wasn't.
No, I saw the list.
It was a lot of airplanes.
It was insane.
Yeah.
(14:19):
I had to write that I had to write it all out to prove to myself.
Sure.
But it's just, you know, you have to...
You can't teach yourself to trust yourself overnight.
You have to teach yourself over time.
It takes a lot of time and a lot of practice.
And it's instances like that that help teach myself that like, oh, you can trust your experience.
(14:42):
Your experience is valid.
You are not imagining things.
That is a lot of airplanes.
Which is helpful.
It was a lot of airplanes.
Yeah.
It's not like that anymore.
It was a seasonal thing.
Okay.
But the whale noises still happen.
Okay.
They are really weird.
I can't wait for you to record one.
That'll happen.
I hope you get to hear it.
(15:03):
Maybe I'll hear it for myself.
A United or a Spirit flight from my house.
I don't think that you hear the same part at your house.
Perhaps not.
Three minutes and 21 seconds.
It's a long way.
Okay.
I think the last thing I want to say is that emotional intelligence is challenging.
And it's definitely not something that I feel like an expert on particularly because it's
(15:28):
something that I dramatically lacked as a child.
My mother very frequently had to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say
anything at all to me because I spoke my mind in ways that were hurtful.
And I thought I was just being honest.
And sometimes that's fine.
But sometimes it's not.
(15:49):
And I guess I don't regret putting my foot in my mouth as many times as I did as a young
person because I have learned tact and graciousness and the importance of being polite because
of being impolite perhaps too many other times.
But it's a process.
It's always a process.
(16:10):
I am so glad that you shared that with me because I didn't know that about you.
And it actually gave me this epiphany that this is probably why you feel like such a
safe space for me.
As a child, I was the opposite.
I was afraid to say anything because I didn't want to get in trouble.
I was very observant.
(16:30):
I was super inquisitive, but I was pretty quiet.
And I am now learning a therapy that I was afraid to cause any disruption and I didn't
want to add any stress.
I just wanted to be the perfect kid and I think that resulted in me holding back a lot
and holding a lot in.
So I think it's really interesting that as a kid, you had to be told to not say things
(16:53):
because as a child, I kept a lot in.
And as an adult, I'm now learning it's okay to share what you're thinking and feeling.
It's okay to think and feel those things that you're thinking and feeling.
I don't know what made me so afraid that what I was thinking and feeling might be wrong
or not allowed, but I'm now working on giving myself permission to feel and think those
(17:17):
things.
So I bet being around you is just a subconscious good influence on me because you're such a
good example of staying authentic to yourself and not being afraid to share how you feel.
There's planes been constantly going over our heads by the way.
I love how you're going to hear them, I really cannot.
I'm just so on the zone that I don't notice them.
(17:38):
I'm glad you're in the zone.
Yeah.
Okay.
We can wrap it up on the- I think we should wrap five airplanes since my airplane story.
There are a lot.
I believe you.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I think we should wrap up because I feel like we're rambling and I want more structure
moving forward.
Oh, great.
For future episodes, for some of them, we can just chat.
But I had a list of topics.
Sure.
They do want this to be educational to an extent and then I want a lot of it to be me
(18:01):
telling my story of my health things.
Yeah.
So I want to share a human beings perspective on how to care for your human body.
Yeah.
Hey, did you know that minerals are responsible for every function in your body?
Did you know that if you're having symptoms of anything and your minerals are messed up,
it could be just minerals?
(18:22):
Did you know that your body can't make hormones unless you have the right minerals?
All of these things?
No.
Nobody knows any of this.
Did you know that your nervous system is responsible for your entire experience as a human?
No.
Like, these are things that I think people need to know and that have shaped my own perspective.
I want to talk more about feeling your feelings.
(18:43):
We kind of touched on that.
I think that's a good one.
That's a great one.
I love relationships.
It's your relationship with yourself, your relationship with a significant other, with
friends, with family.
But I'm excited to have you.
We're going to have fun.
We're going to have fun.
And I'm curious too if this actually gets listeners because you've really gone through
this journey by yourself, truly alone, to try to understand what you've been experiencing.
(19:09):
And I think by sharing this at all, someone may hear it and say, I totally experienced
that too and I don't know anyone else that has and I have not known how to talk about
it.
When other people have experiences that they are also experiencing alone, we can bring it
to the forefront.
I would love to do that.
(19:29):
Having a space where you can learn about what other people are going through, it just brings
people together.
Yeah.
It builds community.
Even if it's a digital community, there are a lot of people out there who don't know
what's normal and they don't know that there's an alternative.
What I've learned this past year, I'm really starting to learn it the most now, is that
(19:52):
I didn't realize that my experience as a human being was unique.
I did not know that everybody else wasn't like me until recently, really recently, which
is crazy because recently I've been learning that my experience is very unique.
Very.
But I think that's true for everyone to some extent.
It is, but we don't think about it.
(20:13):
No.
It's so true.
And I think sharing my own experience of how sensitive I've discovered I am, for example.
If I share that and really explain about me discovering how sensitive I am and then what
I'm now able to do to help myself navigate life situations more easily, to help make
myself more resilient, not to change who I am or to be less sensitive, but to embrace
(20:36):
it and say, wow, I didn't realize that I was allowed to be sensitive.
So I think I knew from a young age, but I was taught that it was inconvenient for everybody.
But now that I know that I'm allowed to be sensitive and that it's just part of who I
am and I'm embracing it, it's like, wow, well, this is actually an asset.
(20:57):
Me being so sensitive, that's actually such a beautiful thing.
And so if me leaning into my sensitivity is so eye-opening for me, maybe that will give
other people permission to lean into aspects of themselves that maybe they've been ashamed
of for their whole lives.
Because I was ashamed of being sensitive because I was told I was too sensitive and that it
was inconvenient and it was like inappropriate, like, oh, you cry all the time.
(21:21):
That's too much.
But the reality is it's who I am.
It's my body.
It's my nervous system.
And yes, I can learn ways to cope and be more resilient and to be more in the driver's
seat of it so that I don't have to be a victim to how sensitive I am.
But I can really own that aspect of who I am.
I would love for that to give other people permission to own parts of who they are too,
(21:42):
but maybe they didn't feel like they have the confidence to embrace or the permission
to.
Yeah.
Well, we've covered a lot of ground.
I think this is good.
This is not a good indication of how all of the episodes will go.
That's fine.
But it's a good intro to who you are and our friendship.
Great.
And our thoughts and all of it.
(22:04):
I think this is great.
Great.
And today is October 27th, 2024.
Yes, it is.
The beginning.
This is the beginning.
Thank you for being with me for it.
Thank you for having me.
It'll be fun.
Okay.
Think we can sign up?
Yeah.
Lincoln Golden Girl.
Welcome to Golden Girl, a space where we dive deep into health, healing, connection, and community.
(00:07):
I'm your host, Becca Golden, and this podcast is all about sharing and documenting my journey.
Each episode, we'll discuss topics like health and wellness, what I'm learning in therapy,
work-life balance, relationships, community, and all the ways I strive for more aliveness and presence every day.
Let's dive in.
Hi.
(00:29):
Hi.
Welcome to the podcast.
Hello.
We need to tell everyone who you are.
Okay.
Actually, I didn't even say the plan of the fact that you'll be here with me, so maybe I'll just say that.
Sure.
Or you can also say, sometimes you'll be by yourself, but sometimes I'll be here to facilitate.
Okay.
Yeah, that's good.
My goal in having you here is to facilitate conversation.
(00:51):
Great.
I wanted to have a friend here with me who I completely feel like myself around.
Great.
You definitely make me feel comfortable being myself.
Good.
And you're also just a very interesting person.
You have great points of view.
You're open-minded and you're always so interested in everything, and I love that.
Thank you.
So tell everyone who you are.
My name is Madeline Acre.
(01:12):
I am Becca's friend and neighbor.
We met in 2017, more or less.
We don't have to get into the story of how we met.
That could be for another day.
That could be for another day.
But the fact that we're neighbors now is really nice.
I love that.
You know, I think the reason that I try to be someone that's easy to talk to is because
(01:34):
it's easy to get stuck in your own ways and to be surrounded by people that have a similar
point of view, but I really want to come into conversations or want to enter life with a
sense of curiosity.
Curiosity and being excited about things that are maybe other people would consider minutia,
is fun.
Being excited about things that are small or things that are random is fun.
(01:56):
So I try to seek that out when I can.
I think that comes out loud and clear from you.
Since the very first day of our friendship, you have always approached our conversations
with curiosity, for sure.
I always have some random thing that I'm up to, and I've never felt judged.
I've always just felt like you're curious.
(02:18):
I think that's great, so good.
You're doing it.
Great.
Well, I think curiosity is not judgmental at all.
Being judgmental is very different than being curious, and I think being curious is much
more inquisitive and fun and a more effective way to engage with people and to see eye to
eye with people.
And I think if I had one funny Becca comment to make, it's the fact that you asked me to
(02:42):
roast you on your birthday.
There are many things that people would say, like, oh, I've never had a friend that does
XYZ, but definitely have I never met someone that said, will you roast me for your birthday?
And I did, and it was very fun.
And it's just, I don't know why I find it so amusing and humorous that you actively want
people to say things that are sometimes in bad taste, which is just bizarre, but also
(03:09):
very amusing.
The reason that I asked you to roast me and the people that I asked to roast me is because
there are people who I feel see me for who I am.
I would never ask people to roast me that I feel misunderstood by.
There are plenty of people in my life that I feel like I have to explain myself, explain
myself again, and I still don't quite feel like they're grasping what I'm intending.
(03:31):
And that's fine, but I would never ask those people to roast me.
But if you say things about me that are insulting, they're not insulting, it's just comments
about me.
I think I'm roastable.
I think it was a funny thing.
It was funny.
Well, and I think even more funny was the fact that the roast that I gave you was because
I was on the close friends Instagram experience.
(03:52):
I roasted a lot about your bodily functions and the way you talk about your bodily functions
and the fact that everyone has physical experiences, but the way that you talked about it was just
so different.
And I think it's funny, but I think that it's your life.
(04:13):
And that's how you're sharing it.
And I think that it was still a good experience for all of us to see it.
And I think even though I find humor in the way that you're sharing, it is good that you're
sharing it.
And there's a lot of interesting things that people can take out of these tidbits.
And even the fact that people left your birthday knowing that there's a follicular and alludial
phase and never knew what that was before is a good thing.
(04:33):
It is a good thing.
And we're going to talk all about that.
That's the point of the podcast is like, let's take the close friend story and turn it into
a everybody story.
And I also feel privileged to be part of this podcast because in a lot of ways I often feel
disconnected.
It's going to sound too harsh, but sometimes disconnected from my body.
(04:54):
I don't feel very strongly sometimes or I've waves of emotion come occasionally.
I don't experience waves of emotion very frequently, but I feel like you're experiencing waves
of emotion many times on a daily basis.
And so witnessing that from you is intriguing to me because it's something that is more
foreign to my life experience, but it is something that I am definitely curious about because
(05:20):
it's not something you can manufacture.
It just happens.
I mean, you can't manufacture it, but it's taken work for me to get to this point, which
is a funny thing to say because the emotion is like an emotional crisis.
I mean, crying on literally the last time when I was having my...
It was not a great day.
When you came over, I was actually crying on the floor like immobile.
(05:42):
I was not okay, but yes, I worked really hard to get to that point.
Because think about in 2017, the version of me you knew then or like even just when I
moved into the house, like I didn't feel anything.
I would intellectualize all of my feelings.
And those are topics that I would love to cover on episodes because it's taken me so
(06:03):
much learning about my nervous system and therapy to get in touch with physical bodily
sensations rather than just naming the emotion and explaining why it might be there, taking
that narrative away from it and just like, where am I feeling this in my body?
And the first few times my therapist asked me that, I was like, I don't.
Like, what do you mean?
(06:24):
Yeah.
Am I supposed to just pick something?
And we would go through that exercise.
We'd be like, I kind of sense you getting emotional.
And I was like, oh, am I?
And I was, but I'd like teach myself how to stop suppressing all this, not to say that
you suppress it or anybody else.
I'd also learned that I'm very sensitive.
But I think that's a good point.
(06:44):
Maybe we are all more sensitive and we don't know.
Suppressing is maybe the wrong word.
We're not suppressing it intentionally, but perhaps we're suppressed unintentionally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a lot of times, I mean, I would say it's a combination of things.
It could be your body's way of protecting you or it could be things that you were taught.
Like, when I think about the times that I was little and I would be crying, my mom,
(07:07):
her instinct was, oh, my daughter is crying.
I must cheer up my daughter.
My child is in pain.
I must make it better.
So if I were crying, she would tell me all the good things to look forward to.
Like, oh, it's okay, honey.
Like we're going to go get milkshakes or don't worry, we're going to go home and you can play
with your toys.
I think her instinct was tears mean pain, pain, bad.
(07:31):
Like that's a cry in the brain.
Make it stop.
So I was never taught it's okay to cry.
That must have been really scary.
Like are you scared?
That's okay.
It can be scary to feel this way sometimes.
There was no outlet to just cry.
And a lot of times, even now, I just need to cry and I don't even know why.
There isn't a way to rationalize it, but an outlet to release those emotions is so important.
(07:55):
A lot of times, it's not something that we're taught and it's not usually for any bad reason.
It's just because nobody's taught this stuff.
So yes, it's taken a lot of work for me to allow myself to cry constantly.
Good.
But it's been such a release.
Good.
And I'm proud of myself for it.
And another observation I have is you mentioned the way you were when we met is different
(08:17):
than the way you are today.
But the funny thing is, I was very oblivious.
Or many people didn't realize the way that you felt then is so different than the way
you feel today.
Like we were just friends and we hung out and did stuff.
And I didn't really think about your deep well-being on a daily basis.
I just thought things were fine.
Fine.
But what does that even mean?
(08:39):
I didn't know if I had to ask you deeply how you were doing.
We were also acquainted, really.
We weren't super good friends.
So I didn't know if I had to delve into those things.
But even with our close friends, it's hard to know.
Know what that looks like.
What being well or feeling good or being suppressed.
Like we may never know how other people are acting.
(09:00):
I think it's because of how I feel around you.
Okay, hang on.
Let me switch.
Wait.
When I was enjoying my moment of silence, I couldn't help but think, oh, there's no
airplane flying over this house right now.
So silent.
There have been a few.
I didn't mention them earlier.
I figure.
The airplanes have gotten better.
(09:22):
Good.
We can tell the story of the airplanes.
Oh, the airplanes are going to have an entire episode.
The airplanes don't need an entire episode.
Yes, they definitely do.
The airplane thing, I think, is one of the best in a nutshell Becca situations because
tell it now, we're not going to do a whole episode.
We should do it now because I already am going to cut out like so much of what you talked
(09:45):
about.
So the airplanes.
So we live three minutes apart from each other biking distance, which is 21 seconds.
And 21 seconds.
We are both on the same flight path.
And one day this was in the heat of the summer, I want to say.
So let's say a few months ago, I get a text from you saying, hey, have you noticed any
(10:09):
noises from the air of traffic lately?
No, can't say I have.
The air traffic seems as usual today, thanks for asking why.
And you said it's been very noisy.
I am disturbed by the audible sounds coming from the airplanes lately and I don't know
(10:30):
what to do about it.
So in typical Becca fashion, you took matters into your own hands and emailed Austin Bergstrom
International Airport, contact me and inquired about the flight path or what may be causing
such a disturbance.
And my other favorite part of the story is you got a response, but it felt canned.
(10:55):
The response, which you sent on your close friend story.
I don't have a ton of AI exposure.
I intentionally don't seek out chat GPT to solve my life's problems.
However, the answer that you got from ABIA's contact page felt like a chat GPT answer to
(11:18):
how can I respond to this inquiry?
It was 100% chat GPT.
Yeah, it probably was.
It was probably the most chat GPT answer I've ever seen.
Yeah, and I like that your dad had also said the same thing.
So I felt like we were on the same wavelength, pun intended.
And I also liked that you had written down and looked into the sky the time of day and
(11:44):
the airplane make and model, whatever to verify that you weren't psychotic.
There were in fact basically a plane a minute for hours.
It was a plane a minute for hours.
However, I wasn't hearing any of them.
So this is just such a funny thing of like these planes were in fact.
(12:07):
It's quiet now.
It's not that bad.
It's quiet now.
This way.
Some of them make whale noises.
I mean, I do hear it.
That was pretty quiet.
It's an airplane passing overhead.
That one was pretty quiet.
It didn't disrupt us.
It did not at all.
That was just one.
But when you hear it every minute.
(12:28):
It's disruptive.
Every minute and they're usually a lot louder.
It was driving me insane.
The fact that you were able to verify the insanity by writing down each interaction with these
airplanes really did help cement that they were passing overhead.
But the fact that I just went out with my life and didn't hear them ever also is kind
(12:49):
of funny.
I felt like I was losing my mind.
I was very well aware that to bring this up made me sound like a crazy person.
I was like, of all things to happen, there are airplanes flying overhead too loudly
too often now.
That sounds like I'm losing my mind.
(13:10):
That's like, okay, maybe we need to have an intervention with Becca.
Maybe we need to check her into a facility.
The proof is in the pudding though.
But I've actually, I talked a lot to my therapist about this because I have trouble with gas
lighting myself and invalidating my own experience.
I do that all the time.
I'm working on it.
But I've been trying to not gas light myself.
(13:33):
I would love to get to a point one day where I wouldn't have had to write it all down to
validate that it was as bad as I thought.
Because the reality is that if I felt like it was too many airplanes, who's to say that
that's not true?
Because I am invalidating that, which I did.
And so then I wrote out, like every time I heard it, I wrote down the time and the airline
(13:59):
because for one thing I wanted to figure out which airlines were, which planes were making
the whale noises.
Did you figure it out?
Spirit and United.
And I have a...
I heard it here first.
I have a United flight tomorrow.
But like I just, I was like, I'm going crazy.
This is...
But I wasn't.
No, I saw the list.
It was a lot of airplanes.
It was insane.
Yeah.
(14:19):
I had to write that I had to write it all out to prove to myself.
Sure.
But it's just, you know, you have to...
You can't teach yourself to trust yourself overnight.
You have to teach yourself over time.
It takes a lot of time and a lot of practice.
And it's instances like that that help teach myself that like, oh, you can trust your experience.
(14:42):
Your experience is valid.
You are not imagining things.
That is a lot of airplanes.
Which is helpful.
It was a lot of airplanes.
Yeah.
It's not like that anymore.
It was a seasonal thing.
Okay.
But the whale noises still happen.
Okay.
They are really weird.
I can't wait for you to record one.
That'll happen.
I hope you get to hear it.
(15:03):
Maybe I'll hear it for myself.
A United or a Spirit flight from my house.
I don't think that you hear the same part at your house.
Perhaps not.
Three minutes and 21 seconds.
It's a long way.
Okay.
I think the last thing I want to say is that emotional intelligence is challenging.
And it's definitely not something that I feel like an expert on particularly because it's
(15:28):
something that I dramatically lacked as a child.
My mother very frequently had to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say
anything at all to me because I spoke my mind in ways that were hurtful.
And I thought I was just being honest.
And sometimes that's fine.
But sometimes it's not.
(15:49):
And I guess I don't regret putting my foot in my mouth as many times as I did as a young
person because I have learned tact and graciousness and the importance of being polite because
of being impolite perhaps too many other times.
But it's a process.
It's always a process.
(16:10):
I am so glad that you shared that with me because I didn't know that about you.
And it actually gave me this epiphany that this is probably why you feel like such a
safe space for me.
As a child, I was the opposite.
I was afraid to say anything because I didn't want to get in trouble.
I was very observant.
(16:30):
I was super inquisitive, but I was pretty quiet.
And I am now learning a therapy that I was afraid to cause any disruption and I didn't
want to add any stress.
I just wanted to be the perfect kid and I think that resulted in me holding back a lot
and holding a lot in.
So I think it's really interesting that as a kid, you had to be told to not say things
(16:53):
because as a child, I kept a lot in.
And as an adult, I'm now learning it's okay to share what you're thinking and feeling.
It's okay to think and feel those things that you're thinking and feeling.
I don't know what made me so afraid that what I was thinking and feeling might be wrong
or not allowed, but I'm now working on giving myself permission to feel and think those
(17:17):
things.
So I bet being around you is just a subconscious good influence on me because you're such a
good example of staying authentic to yourself and not being afraid to share how you feel.
There's planes been constantly going over our heads by the way.
I love how you're going to hear them, I really cannot.
I'm just so on the zone that I don't notice them.
(17:38):
I'm glad you're in the zone.
Yeah.
Okay.
We can wrap it up on the- I think we should wrap five airplanes since my airplane story.
There are a lot.
I believe you.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I think we should wrap up because I feel like we're rambling and I want more structure
moving forward.
Oh, great.
For future episodes, for some of them, we can just chat.
But I had a list of topics.
Sure.
They do want this to be educational to an extent and then I want a lot of it to be me
(18:01):
telling my story of my health things.
Yeah.
So I want to share a human beings perspective on how to care for your human body.
Yeah.
Hey, did you know that minerals are responsible for every function in your body?
Did you know that if you're having symptoms of anything and your minerals are messed up,
it could be just minerals?
(18:22):
Did you know that your body can't make hormones unless you have the right minerals?
All of these things?
No.
Nobody knows any of this.
Did you know that your nervous system is responsible for your entire experience as a human?
No.
Like, these are things that I think people need to know and that have shaped my own perspective.
I want to talk more about feeling your feelings.
(18:43):
We kind of touched on that.
I think that's a good one.
That's a great one.
I love relationships.
It's your relationship with yourself, your relationship with a significant other, with
friends, with family.
But I'm excited to have you.
We're going to have fun.
We're going to have fun.
And I'm curious too if this actually gets listeners because you've really gone through
this journey by yourself, truly alone, to try to understand what you've been experiencing.
(19:09):
And I think by sharing this at all, someone may hear it and say, I totally experienced
that too and I don't know anyone else that has and I have not known how to talk about
it.
When other people have experiences that they are also experiencing alone, we can bring it
to the forefront.
I would love to do that.
(19:29):
Having a space where you can learn about what other people are going through, it just brings
people together.
Yeah.
It builds community.
Even if it's a digital community, there are a lot of people out there who don't know
what's normal and they don't know that there's an alternative.
What I've learned this past year, I'm really starting to learn it the most now, is that
(19:52):
I didn't realize that my experience as a human being was unique.
I did not know that everybody else wasn't like me until recently, really recently, which
is crazy because recently I've been learning that my experience is very unique.
Very.
But I think that's true for everyone to some extent.
It is, but we don't think about it.
(20:13):
No.
It's so true.
And I think sharing my own experience of how sensitive I've discovered I am, for example.
If I share that and really explain about me discovering how sensitive I am and then what
I'm now able to do to help myself navigate life situations more easily, to help make
myself more resilient, not to change who I am or to be less sensitive, but to embrace
(20:36):
it and say, wow, I didn't realize that I was allowed to be sensitive.
So I think I knew from a young age, but I was taught that it was inconvenient for everybody.
But now that I know that I'm allowed to be sensitive and that it's just part of who I
am and I'm embracing it, it's like, wow, well, this is actually an asset.
(20:57):
Me being so sensitive, that's actually such a beautiful thing.
And so if me leaning into my sensitivity is so eye-opening for me, maybe that will give
other people permission to lean into aspects of themselves that maybe they've been ashamed
of for their whole lives.
Because I was ashamed of being sensitive because I was told I was too sensitive and that it
was inconvenient and it was like inappropriate, like, oh, you cry all the time.
(21:21):
That's too much.
But the reality is it's who I am.
It's my body.
It's my nervous system.
And yes, I can learn ways to cope and be more resilient and to be more in the driver's
seat of it so that I don't have to be a victim to how sensitive I am.
But I can really own that aspect of who I am.
I would love for that to give other people permission to own parts of who they are too,
(21:42):
but maybe they didn't feel like they have the confidence to embrace or the permission
to.
Yeah.
Well, we've covered a lot of ground.
I think this is good.
This is not a good indication of how all of the episodes will go.
That's fine.
But it's a good intro to who you are and our friendship.
Great.
And our thoughts and all of it.
(22:04):
I think this is great.
Great.
And today is October 27th, 2024.
Yes, it is.
The beginning.
This is the beginning.
Thank you for being with me for it.
Thank you for having me.
It'll be fun.
Okay.
Think we can sign up?
Yeah.
Lincoln Golden Girl.
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