03. Emotional Armor: Turning Pain into Power, Janet Barrett's Fearless Journey to Emotional Wellbeing

Episode Transcript
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Michael Devous (00:04):
Okay, so the show is back up, my stuff is
back up, the computer isrepaired.
I mean, it was kind of adisaster.
You know lessons learned.
Y'all make sure you back upyour stuff twice in multiple
places to the cloud and locally,because you never know.
I thought I had, I thought Iwas on top of it.

(00:26):
I consider myself to berelatively tech savvy, you know
so, and yet I was just so busygoing and doing that I forgot to
do some of the things to takecare of my files and my product
and my production.
But luckily for me, you know,the files are saved.
So here we are.

(00:47):
Episode three finally coming outwith Janet Barrett, whose
author of Stop the Break, is anexploration of how to stop the
cycle of the mental abuse weheap on ourselves, that we do to
ourselves as a result of ourconditioning or training or
upbringing, and to discover ouremotional core and how, by

(01:13):
abdicating responsibility forthat, we can wind up miles and
miles and years down the road,waking up one day only realize
it, just to realize that that.
How did we get here?
What's happening with my life?
What's happening with mymarriage?
What's happening with my family?
What's happening with myemotions?
A lot of us learn coping skillsand coping mechanisms that do

(01:34):
not serve us and that's no one'sfault in particular, but it is
our responsibility to do betterfor ourselves, and this book and
what Janet is trying to do tohelp us, is to find out how to
have a better relationship withour self and our emotions and to
begin to bring those things tothe surface and allow them to

(01:55):
guide us, which is what thefearless road also does, which
is, I hope, provides some way ofguiding us down our road to
success as entrepreneurs,authors, business people, just
in life in general, you know,because we can get lost, you
know, in the minutia, we can getlost in the busyness of life.
We can get lost with ourchildren and our families and

(02:16):
work and our efforts and ourbusinesses and stuff, and forget
that taking care of ourselvesemotionally is crucial to our
well-being and to our success ashumans on this planet.
Having an amazing experience,hopefully, yeah.
So episode three emotionalarmor with Janet Barrett.

(02:37):
Let's get into this.
Let's armor up and stayfearless.
Okay, all right, let's get intoit there.
So let's see we are going tostart with.

(03:01):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome toall my lovely listeners to the
Fearless Road podcast.
Thanks for joining us today,giving us your time, your
attention, your lovely ears.
I think they're lovely.
I hope they're lovely they'reif they're like mine.
They're super tiny and small,because that's what I got from
my mama was teeny ears, but Ican hear really well, so that's
a good thing.
Don't let it fool you.

(03:23):
So on today's show we have anincredible guest I'm very
excited to be sharing ourfearless journey with, to be
looking at and exploring some ofthe things that she's been
writing about as an author.
Our guest, janet Barrett, theproactive and mental health
advocate, speaker and writer.
She is the founder and CEO ofcerebral health, a company

(03:46):
focused on eliminating thestigma around mental health and
helping individuals learn tothrive.
Her new book, by the way Stopthe Break, which is out on
Amazon you can get it right nowtakes readers on a journey to
help them learn how to beproactive in their own mental
health and on their mentalhealth journey.
They're through this road andtoday she's going to talk about
her particular journey on afearless road and she's going to

(04:06):
share with us what she'slearned about stop, about not
just stopping and surviving, butbeginning to thrive, so welcome
.

Janet Barrett (04:15):
Janet.

Barrett, that's where we do this.
I don't know if I'm going toput applause in here, but,
ladies and gentlemen, I'm surepeople are applauding like crazy
out there, so of course theyare.
I mean why wouldn't they Fromsurviving to thriving?
I mean, this is one of thethings that I think most of us
hopefully a lot of us find out,where we discovered that that's

(04:39):
what's happening.
We discover that we've beenspending the majority of our
life just surviving, that allthe tactics and all of the
methods and all of the thingsand skill sets and experiences
that we seem to have accumulated, that have allowed us to just
sort of put it on cruise controland manage things, you know,
suddenly we realize, oh my God,we're just surviving, we're not

(05:02):
thriving anymore, we're notchasing the dream, we're just
sitting back and kind ofcruising.
By the way, I thought thatthat's what I wanted.
I thought that's what Ideserved was to relax a little
bit right and take my foot offthe pedal for a minute and enjoy
some of the fruits of myparticular labors.

When I discovered that's not where my happiness
lies, I totally understandAbsolutely, and I feel like so
many people do feel like theyjust have to push through and
keep going and not really focuson what they deserve and what
they should be able to get outof life.

So a little background on you.
I know that we did thisbeautiful intro and everything,
but do you want to give theaudience a little bit more of a?
I don't know?
Take us back a little bit andshare with us a little bit more
about yourself and your journey,specifically as an entrepreneur
, of course, but in yourpersonal life too, which I know
has a lot of extra.
There's a lot of stuff tounpack there.

I am extra, I'm sure we'll get into it I am
extra.
I will absolutely take thatmoniker, no problem.

Own that.
I own it.
I own it Right here.

So I found myself a few years ago and what I like
to think of as kind of thesecond stage of my adult life.
So my first stage is what Ithink most everybody does.
They finish their education andthen they get their first real
job.
And I did that.
I finished actually my firstmaster's degree and went out and

(06:29):
to the corporate world andbecame a management consultant.

And I worked with.
Wait what?
Right out of college, youbecame a management consultant.

I did yeah.

It was news fast .

I know it was not like yes, it was not that
exciting.
I worked on skewrationalization and product
procurement strategies.

Wow, I know how long did it take you to say that
without stumbling over thewords.

Well, let's see, that was 30 years ago, so about
30 years, yeah, I know Skews.

Does anyone recall skews for the listeners
out there?
A skew is like a QR code, butthe original way that the UPC
codes that we used to put onpackaging so that we could
follow inventory through itssupposedly through its logistics
trail.
So I'm really smart.

I know it seems like you may have had some skew
experience yourself.

I have.
I have.
I have a personal relationshipwith organization and I have to
admit that I use smart labelswhen I moved, and so every box
had a smart label and aphotograph so you could scan it
and you could see what wasinside of it, and then I could
put it on a chart in my GoogleDrive to show me where in the

(07:46):
storage it was placed.

Oh my goodness, so I could find it yeah, ups has
nothing on you.

Dude Container store.
I go like, take me, you want totake me on a date.
Take me on a date, get some froyo and take me to a container
store and I'll geek out.

So you're like all right, we're getting married
now.
That's what it is, and it's allgoing to be spacial.
That's basically the Like.
I will be able to track it aswell.
Oh, my gosh, that is amazing.
I've never heard of anybodymoving and doing that level of
tracking an organization that is, I might need help.

It's extremely impressive.

Is it you need help, or maybe you need to teach
others how to do the same?

I would love to share the joy of packing well,
so.

I mean honestly, I feel like that is something
that you could teach others.

I think you're right.
I might add that to my list ofthings I can Well I'm sharing it
on this I'm going to lean intopacking, exactly.
So if you guys want to knowsmart labels, go on Amazon.
You can find them on smartlabels.
You can get them, you can enjoythem, you can stick them on
anything and label stuff andthen, if you forget where it is,
just pick out your phone andlook for the label.
Search the inventory.

Like smart label.
You need to sponsor me, yes.

Just saying right now Hashtag smart label.

So there you go.
I mean a couple othersimilarities.

I know you did this sort of logistics supply
chain and everything else, butdid you know that we have
something else in common?

What's that?

We were both ugly babies.
No, you were too I read yourbook and I love that.
Your mom told you about beingan ugly baby and my mother cried
her eyes out when they broughtme to her because apparently I
was born early and there's athing known, I guess, when

(09:38):
you're in the womb that you arecovered in hair, and I believe
you sloughed that off just priorto the actual birth.
Well, I was born early.
I was covered head to toe inblack hair.
I looked like a monkey and mymother I said you were a monkey
baby.
My mom cried so hard and she wasthere with her best friend, who

(10:00):
also had a baby on the same day, and they were like comparing
babies and both of us were sougly.
He went on to become a supermodel, by the way, sure.

You defined the odds.

You both turn out ordinarily handsome.
Exactly, I didn't do too bad.
I kept some of the hair.

I was going to say that you still have the hair
going and the little, thelittle monkey ears.
The little monkey ears.
And yeah, you have good hair.

Thanks, I try, your mom should be excited for
that you do.

You have great hair.

She would be if she were here.
So God rest her soul.
She's up there, she's watching,and or no, she's not.
She's busy.
I know her.
She's not watching.
She's out running aroundhandling all these big angels
and doing all major you knowwhat I mean Like she's like VIP
level stuff up there.

Like she's a super star.

So she's up there managing other souls and
probably has them right now, ifI know her in a garden somewhere
on a padded pillow digging inthe dirt and planning some stuff
.

So I love that.
That's a wonderful.

I love that image of your mom when she
really right before she died,which because I was lucky to
move them up to their house inMissouri literally 10 days
before she had a massive heartattack and died.
Oh my telling she gathered herchildren, my babies, like my
babies, and she said that shefelt like when she was, that

(11:24):
she's the tender, she's tendingher garden of flowers, when she
cares for us, and that we areher little flowers in her garden
.
And so when she passed away,you know, every time I see a
garden and every time I thinkabout that and I think I'm just
her little flower down here onthe garden of the earth and
she's tending to me somewhere,you know, taking care of me.

(11:47):
So it's a nice feeling.

I love that.
That is a wonderful, wonderfulmemory to have of her and then
to have that reminder as you gothrough life is really special.

Yeah Well, from one ugly baby to another.

You know, we find each other, we do.
There is the ugly baby club.

We should start one on Facebook and be like who
wants to join?
I mean, you know it's notsomething you can control when
you're that small, but my gosh,I think we are all part of a
very select group of people.

We'll get t-shirts.

Exactly.

That way we can see each other on the street and
be like oh, you were an uglybaby too.

I recognize you.
Yes, the UBC, the ugly babyclub.
It's going to be a thing.

I am starting that.
I agree, we are starting aFacebook page.

We digress, but it's okay, because the Fearless
Road is a winding journey andnot all these roads are straight
, so that's just fine with me.

I have yet to take a straight road in my life.
They're boring.

They're good for speed.

They are, I will tell you so.
I grew up in the Midwest andthere are mainly straight roads
there.
It's a very big grid system, soif you see a road on a diagonal
, you take it because it'sfaster.
Well, when I went to look atgrad schools, I went to from the
Midwest, I went down to NorthCarolina, and my best friend and

(13:15):
I ended up road tripping.
It was like a 24-hour.
We didn't sleep keep on drivingroad trip.
And it was.
I mean this was back in the 80s, so a long time ago, yep and
atlases.

So Google maps, not even map quests.
Map quests, or what's the otherone that we used to have the
physical maps.

They were called.
I can see it in the back of thecar, just an atlas Like the big
book.
Yeah, that's what I had and soyeah, so I basically would page
through that and we'd figure outour route.
And as we're getting closer,we're getting more and more
tired, and I finally found thisroad that went on a diagonal

(14:01):
through West Virginia.

And.

I will tell you right now.
If you are out driving andyou're on a road and a sign
above it says entering mountainparkway, turn around.
Okay, it is neither a straightpath and there are very large
animals on there that areroadkill.
Oh, I don't know what kind ofanimal it was, but the amount of

(14:28):
blood that was left on the roadwas enormous.

And yet my friend and I kept plowing
through because we're like itcan't be that bad, oh it can
Just dead bodies everywhere inthe middle of the night, right,
and you're just like what thestories you were probably
filling your head with, oh myGod.

Well, we ended up stopping at a waffle house and
in the back of a car at thewaffle house was and I'm not
making this up a burning Jesusin the back window Wait.

Then we went inside Is a car?

Because that didn't deter us A car.

There's a car parked at the waffle house.

At the waffle house and in the back, imagine
like a figurine of Jesus.
Yeah, and it was.
Basically.
It was on fire but contained.
I have no idea how they did it.
I'm still confused.

So if you guys hear the rain, it is pouring
down over my head right now inthis studio.
I'm in a cabin in the woodshere at the ranch, but it's if
it gets loud I apologize.
So please continue you.
The Jesus is burning in theback of a car.
Well, where?
How did we get here?

Jesus is burning in the back of the car.
That didn't deter us.
We're like nope, we're going in.
So we go in, and it's probablyabout three or four in the
morning at this point in time.
Needless to say, there's peopleat the waffle house, because
why wouldn't you be?
And we go in, we sit down to.
You know, young blonde women goin, sit down and these two men

(16:00):
who neither one of them had afull set of teeth, in fact, I
don't think you could havecombined them.
I am not making this up, I'mnot stereotyping.

This is truly the people that came up to us
Too easy.

And they came over to us and they're like you
want a ride?
We just looked at each otherand we're like we are not
staying.
I put a 20 down.
We left as quickly as we couldbecause we know that the burning
Jesus, that was their car andwe were about to be put into the
slave trade.

So when you were driving away, did the two of
you like look in the rear ofyour mirror for the burning
Jesus?
You're like, if the burningJesus is following us, we're in
trouble.
Gun it.

Like pretty much.
Yes, and I was driving a carthat, by the time we actually
made it to the grad school, themuffler had given out.

And so.

I literally pull on campus and you can hear me
from a mile away.

I love the cars.
I mean kids.
Look, today you guys are sospoiled, I swear to God.
You guys get.
You get these nice new carswith all these features, where
your phone attaches to it andyou can talk to it and do stuff.
No, no, no, no, no.
Back in our day, if you couldsee through the floor without
falling through your car, youwere in good shape.
If it had four wheels andgenuinely had some kind of

(17:21):
braking process, you're fine.

Absolutely, and if you had air conditioning, you
were luxury.

Oh my God, yes, it was called.
Roll the Windows Down.

Oh yeah, by hand Crank the thing down.

I literally I literally because the stereo
system was broken on my car,plugged in my bedroom stereo
speakers.
I opened the panel doors, wiredit all the way to the front.
It's box speakers from Sony,Pioneer or whatever.
It was in my bag seat so Icould listen to music.
It was janky, it was pretty bad.

So that is epic, yeah, but yeah.

So I don't think that there's ever been.

So any of the straight roads, I feel like,
have no good stories, but thosewinding roads, those have the
good stories.

Well, speaking of a good story, do you have an
origin story for your fear, likewhere it all began for you, or?

do you?

look back at all and think of it that way, like
your relationship with fear.

So my relationship with fear, I didn't
honestly discover it until likein my twenties, because I had
some trauma as a child and Ilearned to dissociate and I
could basically get throughanything and nothing would

(18:44):
bother me.
In fact, I didn't reallyembrace my fear until I was in
my fifties.
So, yeah, so, but I didn'trealize how disassociated I was
until my twenties because Iseparated my mind from my body

(19:10):
so well that my kids like thisstory.
I was living in London and Iwas working in a part of the
area that was not that great andI was ending work a little late
, I'll say 10 or 10, 30 at night.
It was dark out and I waswaiting for the bus stop, or I
was waiting at the bus stop forthe trolley.

(19:30):
And as I'm waiting for thetrolley the trolley and as I'm
standing there waiting there's,I can see out of the corner of
my eye that there's threegentlemen kind of walking
towards me and I'm just standingthere minding my own business,
just waiting, and they get up tome and they jump at me and I

(19:54):
stood there, I turned my headvery calmly and looked at them
and I said, yes, they ranBecause they completely expected
me to scream, because theythought they were gonna scare me
out if they were planning ondoing anything.
But they thought that I wouldat least have some reaction, and
to not have a reaction freakedthem out so much that they ran

(20:16):
away.
And they're like what is wrongwith that woman that she didn't
freak out?
Wow.
And but I was able tocompletely separate my physical
reaction to anything from whatwas happening to me for decades.

And don't you think it's fascinating that?
I think a lot of us and when wereach our fifties and maybe
this is just something that wedo because it is part of our
life's journey Although I'veexamined certain things in my
thirties and then I looked backin my forties and stuff but it
was very different and now Ifeel like I looked back at my
coping mechanisms, even thoughthey worked for me for so long.

(20:54):
I began to examine the copingmechanisms I was using to get
through life and begin to wonderwhat the patterns were there
with my relationship with fearand how I was handling stuff.
And it sounds like you hadalready developed a coping
mechanism that allowed you toseparate, at least temporarily,
from the emotion of the momentAbsolutely.

And so what's interesting is, I didn't even
realize I was doing that.
Sure, I had no awareness thatthat is what was happening as I
was going through life, becausewhen I started doing it, I was
at such a young age that I wasusing that coping mechanism to
get through some sexual abuse,and basically I would literally

(21:38):
put in my mind I was somewhereelse and what was happening to
my body was not me.
Yes, and so I completelyseparated but I maintained that
separation for a very long time.

I'm a fellow survivor myself of that.
Yeah, I think it's interestingbecause I can recall pretty with
pretty great clarity themoments that this stuff took
place.
And it's just like and it's aweird thing for me because and
I'm talking about themolestation when I was younger I

(22:18):
was my babysitter that startedit and it was three sisters who
played games and I alwaysthought it was a game.
I always thought that it wassupposed to be fun.
I had no idea it was supposedto be full of shame and full of
all of the harm and all thatstuff, and I didn't know about
that until much later.
So there's a part of me that'skind of grateful that I didn't

(22:39):
carry that burden of guilt andshame with me that would have
been heaped on by other people'sassumptions about your
experience, telling you thatthis is bad.
And this is one of those areaswhere you know, when you do a
lot of reading about thesethings, with either
conversations with God orphilosophical things where they
go nothing is good or bad lessthinking make it so.

(23:02):
And I feel like there's one ofthose places where there's an
innocence that we carry with usuntil an adult tells you it's
bad and you did something wrong.
Right Up until that very momentyou probably don't carry too
much unless you know differently, and maybe I didn't.
I suppose I was too young toknow differently, or at least it
was shared with me in such away that felt like it was

(23:23):
supposed to be.
We were having fun until yearslater and I always wonder if
that's something that has such amassive impact on certain
individuals about how theyreceived life after that, how
they receive anything that theymove forward into, if they're
already starting out by carryingthis loaded self of self-worth
and guilt and shame that justsits there, you know.

Yeah, and I definitely did, because I was
raised in a very religiousfamily and so anything involving
sexuality was not acceptableuntil marriage, and my abuser
told me that one no one wouldbelieve me, and the time that I

(24:11):
did try, they were right and sono, I definitely carried a lot
of guilt and shame.
And why was this happening tome and why would nobody help me?
And how can I get somebody tohelp me?
And I was completelyunsuccessful at making that
happen.
So I carried that with me for along time.

(24:33):
In fact, what I ended up doingwas not only did I dissociate my
mind and my body from some ofthose physical things, I
actually suppressed the memoryfor a very long time, until I
was in college and I wasactually engaged to get married.
And the story of that one is,when the gentleman was asking me

(24:58):
to get married, I didn't reallywant to, but I didn't know how
to say no, because I am a peoplepleaser.
And so he came home, got downon one knee, said will you marry
me?
And I said oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my
God, oh my God, oh my God, oh myGod, oh my God.
And I literally kept goinguntil he finally stood up and

(25:20):
said Janet, is that a yes?
And I looked at him and I said,sure, I think so.
And so I made literally.
I said sure, it was horrible,absolutely horrible, that that
was my answer, because it shouldhave been no.
And had I respected myself andhim enough, I should have said

(25:42):
no.
And I didn't.
And as I was going through thatyear, I was, as I was getting
closer to the actual time I'mlike I really need to call this
off.
I really need to call this off.
And then one day I went to themailbox and there in my mailbox
was a letter from a person Iknew, but I'd never gotten a

(26:04):
letter from before and it was myabuser writing and asking for
my forgiveness.
Whoa how did he have youraddress?
He was a family member.

He was somebody familiar with you.

He had my address .
Yeah, I don't talk about who itwas.

Well, no but, I, mean talk about another
insertion of violating yoursanctity and your space.
That had to have like turnedyou upside down.

Completely, and so I basically couldn't handle
that and canceling the wedding,and so I ended up getting
married, even though I shouldn'thave, and we stayed married for
several years.

Michael Devo (26:45):
Compartmentalizing decided I'll just do the
wedding part and I'll just shovethat down even further.

Well, I was actually starting to deal with
that.
It was like I couldn't dealwith that and cancel the wedding
because you know, there wasjust so much wrapped up in it
that I couldn't handle doingboth things at the same time.
So, yeah, it was a lot.

Geez, that's okay.
So I'm assuming I didn't getthrough the whole book and I
didn't get a chance to readthoroughly all that.
Do you share this in there when?

you talk about this yeah, it's in there.

The you say in there I believe it's in the
chapter on trauma that, knowingthat no one was ever gonna read
your story and judging yourselfthat, you released your fear and
started writing.
Can you share with us a littlebit what that's like to release
your fear and begin the journeyof writing this down?

(27:45):
Writing all this down.

So for me, when the way that this all ended up
happening was after.
So I went through kind of myearly 20s.
I had my career, I ended upgetting married and having kids
and becoming a stay at homeparent, and then one day I found
out my husband was having anaffair and he wanted a divorce.

(28:07):
And it just absolutely crushedme.
And that was when I had tostart dealing with everything,
because it wasn't the divorcethat really crushed me After I
went through all of that, Irealized it was the fact that I
had decades of trauma piled upthat I had never really dealt

(28:29):
with and I needed to startreally dealing with them.
And the way that I did that.
I did a whole bunch ofdifferent things.
I went to the doctor and wentto my therapist, I increased
therapy, I did yoga, meditation,I went on walks, I have a dog,
I had lunches with friends allof the things they say that
you're supposed to do and Ineeded something more.

(28:52):
And the way that that happenedwas I started journaling and I
started working on reconnectingmy mind and my body and learning
that a lot of my response wassimply because I couldn't

(29:15):
acknowledge, I fearedacknowledging what was happening
and actually really engagingwith it, and so I would talk
about it with my therapist.
But I wouldn't really letmyself feel it, and so I kept
hanging onto it, and so when Iwould write it, I would then
figure out a way to physicallyexpress it, and that's a Okay,

(29:37):
so I'm sorry to interrupt youthere.

It's the we see, if I can get into this space
with you that you are sopracticed at the art of
compartmentalizing anddisassociating yourself from
moments where you could orshould or might need to be
feeling something that you'reunaware that you're doing it.

(30:00):
So how does one begin torecognize those moments when
you're doing it, when in factyou're doing it so well that you
don't know you're doing it?
It seems like you're in a loop,or so you know what I mean,
like it could be very confusingor questioning yourself.
Yes, right.

So it literally it took that break of during the
divorce where I mean I couldn'teat, I couldn't sleep.
I was a complete mess and Ijust had to start digging into
why.
And when I really started tolook at it and read about it and
research it, I just I cameacross some research about the

(30:41):
mind-body connection and to yourpoint about how I had been
doing it for so long.
When I read about it, my firstreaction was, yeah, right, who
needs to do that?

I don't do that.

I've been doing it for 50 years and I am totally
fine.

I'm in touch with my emotion.
Yep, exactly.

So it was like, okay, when I started to really
be honest about it, it's likeyou know what You've done a
whole bunch of other stuff.
Why don't you actually learnabout this and see if it's
something that can help you?
And so I did.
I went and learned everything Icould about this concept and
there's a lot of science behindit.

(31:26):
And if you couldn't tell frommy first career the exciting ski
rationalization.
I like logic, I like data, Ilike facts.
I'm a very emotional person,but I like that stuff.
And I like that stuff becausethere's a solidity in it.

(31:46):
There's something very exactly.

You can rely on it, you can recreate it, you can
depend on it.

And so when I went through this and I was
looking for how to fix myself, Ifound the science very
reassuring, and so I started toapply it in my own life, and I
did that by writing about theevents, and then and again it

(32:14):
was just for me.
This was never gonna be foranybody else.
I wrote about them and then Ifound ways to physically express
them, and the one that Istruggled the most with well,
there were two, but the main onewas anger, because I had a lot
of anger in me decades.

A lot of that you did.

And so I had to find ways to safely physically
express that emotion.
And so what I would do is Iwould take what I had written
and I'd start thinking about itand then I would do something
that would express that again ina very safe way.
Some of the things I would do Ibox, and so I have a punching

(32:56):
bag in the basement, but it hadto be.
It wasn't just exercise, it waslinking that thought of the
emotion and actually feelingthat anger well up inside me as
I then would start hitting thepunching bag.
Or another favorite one of mineis smashing something, and in

(33:17):
the book I actually give you theway to safely smash glass.
After much trial and error,figured out the number of bags
and pillowcases and things thatyou need to put around something
in order for it to not flyeverywhere.

If you've ever had ricochet therapy my mother
used to take because I had angerissues too growing up, no
wonder, but we used to get.
You could go to Lake SalvationArmy or Goodwill and you could
buy boxes of plates and Chinaand stuff and we'd get this big
black marker and we'd write onit Whatever that particular

(33:54):
anger was or that feeling was,or if it was a person that made
you angry or an issue orwhatever, and then we would
smash them against the back wallof the alley by the house.

Your mom was ahead of her time.

It was so therapeutic, it was very
therapeutic.

And it's scientifically proven that that
is helpful.

Just be careful, wear goggles.
Yes, exactly, things canshatter and fly, so just be
careful.

You have to be very again, very safely, how you
safely release these emotions.
And so I did that foreverything that I had written
about, and the other emotionthat I really struggled with was
full on sadness.
I suppressed sadness not quiteto the degree that I did anger,

(34:38):
but I still suppressed it.
And so I learned to give myselftime to just sit and cry about
some things, because when you gothrough a divorce or many other
things, you need a grievingprocess to get through it.
And so I had to let myselfgrieve not just that, but in my
childhood, the loss of theinnocence that I never got to

(35:00):
have and a lot of other thingsthat I went through, that it was
just I needed to honestly letmyself grieve them.
And so I did.
And I realized, once I wentthrough and did that and let
that physical expression takethe weight off of my back, off
of my mental load, that thememory wasn't gone, but its

(35:25):
control of me did.
It was gone.
And so what I ended up-?

It's influence over you seem to just dissipate,
I still get sad.

I still get upset about things, but they don't.
It's not that it's overwhelmingtype of thing and it doesn't
keep me up at night anymore andI don't need to talk to anybody
about it and feel like I need todeal with it.
And so I realized after the waya kind of very long story here

(35:57):
sorry came out, is that I, onFacebook, did the gratitude
challenge, and every day for themonth of November I wrote what
I was thankful for.
But I didn't do stuff like oh,I'm thankful for toilet paper
and I'm thankful for indoorplumbing.
I wrote things that were alittle bit more personal, and

(36:21):
one of the things that I wroteabout was I'm thankful for tears
because they allow me torelease my sadness and sometimes
they actually reflect my joy.
And then, when they're gone, Iknow that that emotion has
passed.
And the last one that I did, Iwrote about what my therapist

(36:42):
said to me as I was goingthrough this, before I figured
everything out.
She said to me Janet, tell methree things that you love.
So I was like okay my friends,my family, my dog.
Okay, tell me five things.
I love nature.
I love yoga.
10 things.

(37:02):
And after I did the 10, shelooked at me and she said why
aren't you on that list?

Ooh, that's a good therapist Right.

Dang, and I was like, oh, darn it, it's almost
like I failed the test, darn it.
Of course I should be on there,dang it, but it really did.
It's like you said.
It's like it really makes youthink why am I not on my own
list of things I love?
Because I should love myself.
And so when I got done with thatand I shared a lot of things
throughout that month, I had somany direct messages from people

(37:39):
saying how thankful they werethat I shared my story, because
a lot of people have beenthrough a lot of the things that
I've been through.
I'm not the only one shocking.
I know I'm not that unique andthe response I got was very
inspiring because they were likeI feel seen, I feel heard and I

(38:04):
know that I am not alone.
And so I realized that part ofthe reason why I could never
have written my story earlierwas because there was too much
emotion inside of me to actuallyput it out in the world for
anyone else to engage in.
And since I had let it go, Ihad it had lost that hold on me

(38:26):
and I felt like if I put thisout there and I talked about my
story and I talked about what Ilearned, about how we could
actually do better in dealingwith our emotions, that it may
help even one person.
And so I did.
I wrote a book.
I wrote a book that's kind ofbroken into thirds.

(38:47):
The first third is, I guess,pseudo my memoir.
It's very small sliver of mylife, but part of my life.
And then the middle third isall of the research that I did
and I actually ended up goingback and getting another
master's degree and the book isbased on the thesis that I had
to write for that degree.
And then the last thing the lastpart of the book is my proposal

(39:14):
for how we can make a systemicchange in society in how we deal
with and treat mental health ina much more proactive way.
And I talk about Maya Angelouall the time, because her quote
and I realized that this is nota direct quote, but what it's
been turned into is, now that weknow better, we can do better,

(39:39):
and we've learned so much aboutmental health in the last 20
years that we can do better now,and there's a lot of things we
couldn't have done.

We should be doing better.

Absolutely.
There's a lot of stuff wecouldn't have done even five or
10 years ago, but we have thetechnology.

Yeah, well, I would agree because I don't.
Well, part of what I think isthe technology.
I think the other part of it,ladies and gentlemen this is
Stop the Break is the name ofthe book by Janet Barrett, our
guest on the show.
Part of that, I believe, is our.
You know, even in the 80s wetalked about, well, we are the
therapist and I'm good, you know, and we're doing so great at

(40:21):
discovering our needs.
And you know, it stillsurprises me that, this 40-year
journey, we are still not goodat taking better care of
ourselves in the mental healthand emotional department, that
the very act of you describingyour gratitude and leaving
yourself off the list tells methat our understanding of love

(40:46):
is an action we give away toothers.
It's something that we do forother people, an expression
outside of ourselves, notsomething we do for ourselves.
And I think that's so sad to methat we aren't doing better at
communicating that and sharingthat with our kids, with the
next generation, with ourdoctors and our therapists, and

(41:07):
that we are still in this sortof weird space where
understanding and lovingourselves is such a big, unknown
, vast universe of like stuff.
You know, and I think that'swhere the fear comes from.
I think, because we don't,because we haven't identified
that kind of relationship andwe're not really in tune and
we're not in touch, that thosefears creep in.

(41:28):
You know that I'm a firmbeliever that most of the fears
and I'm not talking aboutclinical fears or psychological
fears or phobias and things likethat I'm talking about the kind
of fears that we tell ourselvesabout ourselves, the things
that we say about ourselves whenno one's around, the things
that go off in our heads whenwe're trying to do, be or have
something new than what wecurrently are, and it's that

(41:50):
self-doubt, that image ofself-worth that creeps in.
And I believe that, because weare creatures of storytelling
and our brains love to tellstories that there's this, that
the future is always a massiveunknown story.
We're always moving throughtime and we're always moving
into the future, and the futureis always an unknown.
You just don't know how it'sgoing to turn out and I think,

(42:10):
partly because of that, ourbrains are constantly trying to
project into that space whatthey think might happen or what
they think is going to happen,based on the little pieces of
information and data that itcurrently has.
And sometimes, if it's notenough, you get these wildly.
You know what if?
Scenarios that are bad and youknow things could turn out bad

(42:32):
or whatever?
These fear, things that come upin your head to tell you you're
not worthy of this, you didn'tknow enough, you didn't learn
enough, you didn't teach enough,no one loved you, you were
raped as a child, you weremolested.
I mean, look at your past.
How do you think that you areworthy of doing any of these
things?
Right To me, all of that isjust a version of your
personality who's terrified of afuture it doesn't know the

(42:54):
answer to and can't see into farenough, and I think having
these sessions that you'retalking about especially writing
it down, I suppose, andexploring it further is where we
, we, the person, the individual, answers that question for our
fear, answers that question forthat little child, that inner
child that we're trying to takecare of, that we're trying to

(43:14):
reinvent a world and a safe life.
For you know, we need better.
We need better tools and waysof filling in the end of our
story confidently by sayingdon't worry what happens, I got
you, I'm always going to be herefor you.
I've got this, we're going to,we're going to make things
happen, we're going to makemagic happen and it's going to
be incredible, the ride's goingto be amazing.

(43:35):
So don't worry, and I don'tknow that we do that, I don't
know that we have that sort ofself-talk that we've practiced
that as much as we've practicedthe other.
You know.

And I think the thing that compounds all of that
is what we hear from theoutside, especially as children.
Yes, you know, if you thinkabout a child's reaction to
anything when they're young, itis a real raw emotional reaction

(44:06):
and if we don't like it, wetell that child to stop.
You know, if a kid throws a fit, the famous saying is we get
what we get and we don't getupset.
And I actually had aconversation with a woman the
other day where she said oh, ifshe got upset in her house, her

(44:26):
mom sent her to her room andlocked the door and said you are
not allowed to come out untilyou can act like a lady.
So she learned that what shefelt naturally was wrong and
it's unacceptable.
If you want for her it wasliterally if you want to be let
out of your room and be withyour you know your parent you

(44:51):
have to act.
The way that I tell you isacceptable, even if it doesn't
feel right for you.
You have to follow that.
And we still do that to this dayand we never really go back to
kids and say, hey, you know, youhad that reaction for a reason.
Let's talk about that and let'stalk about why I said that,

(45:12):
because most often I don't thinkthat it is a negative reason
why people say those hat phrasesof you know, don't be a baby,
act like a man.
I believe that people aretrying to give perspective to
children where you know, if youget a paper cut versus cut off

(45:33):
your hand, your reaction shouldprobably be different.
And some kids tend to overreactto those things.
So it's like, all right, let'sjust make sure that we're on the
correct area in the spectrum ofreaction.
But that's not what they hear.

Well, and I think, as adults dealing with a
child, like you said, they arein the rawest, most natural, you
know, space of feeling, not thenuanced version, not the one
that said I'm really feelingupset right now, but I'm going
to set that aside for a minuteso I can deal with what's in
front of me.
No, no, no, that's the feeling,and it's up and it's front and

(46:11):
center and it's live and it's100% active.
It's not at 40%, it's not at30%, it's 100% there.
And I think, as adults, we'relike whoa, like we.
We don't know how to have 100%of our own feelings.
We can't even own, let alonename, 100% of our own feelings
because we've treated them, someof them, like redheaded

(46:32):
stepchildren, we've treated themlike things that don't belong
here, aren't allowed to have avoice, don't belong in the
conversation.
Just like with fear, we runfrom it, we shove it away, we
turn it down, we want to destroyit, we want to conquer it, we
want to kill it, all thesedifferent things.
When fear, it's just simply anextension of your expression.
Just like joy, just likesadness, just like happiness,

(46:54):
Fear is a part of you and ifwe've spent so many years
pushing it away and kicking itto the curb.
It's no wonder that we findourselves truncated at 50,
wondering A how we got here, Bwhy isn't my life better than
what I thought it was?
And.
C how come I can't feel joy,how come I can't feel happiness,

(47:17):
how come everything just?
feels, blah, you know, and andI'm just sort of floating as you
said, like you know, we're justsurviving, Exactly, we're not
thriving.

And we try to show those emotions that are
acceptable.
So to your point, like we tryto show that we're happy, you
know, if anybody out there hasever said to you you know, hey,
how's it going and you're fine,even though you weren't like,
that is that's what we do.
We can only show those sociallyacceptable emotions.

(47:48):
And yet yes, fine.

And for you, ladies and gentlemen, cover your
children's ears.
Fucked up, insecure.
What is it?
Fucked up insecure, neuroticsomething?
Yeah, exactly.

I actually never heard that before.
Now I want to look it up.

Yeah, yeah, it's like I was like, but my mom
used to tell me she says how areyou feeling?
I said fine, she goes reallyyou're fucked up, insecure,
neurotic and something or other,and I'm like oh God, I don't
think I'm all those things.
Well then, what are you?
Let's pick a feeling, you know.
And I was like okay, let me,let me think more about.

It's true.

She was always so good at that where she was
like digging out of me.
You're not going to hide behindone comfortable little Pat
response.

That's amazing.

You know you're going to need to.
You're going to own yourfeelings.

I have to say I know your mom isn't around, but
I wish I could have met her.
She sounds like an absoluteinspiration.

She taught me a lot.
I think one of the biggestlessons of my life was when she
abandoned me at the airportduring Christmas, when I was
coming home from college.
I was malady, abusive,disrespectful to her
relationship, and you know, Ijust hadn't.
I hadn't.
She was already changing.
She had already been throughthe therapy, she was already

(49:11):
making the changes post divorce,she was already doing the
personal work on her journey andI was stuck in this place of
chaos that the family hadadopted, where yelling at each
other, screaming at each other,creating abusive scenarios was
acceptable and tolerable.
And she had moved on and shewas like that's not going to

(49:31):
happen and if you can't learn totreat me with better respect
and my people in my home withbetter respect, you can stay at
the airport for Christmas forall I care.
And I was shocked.
I couldn't believe it, but itwas a great lesson.
It was a hard lesson but it wasreal.
You know what I mean when aparent stops and says no, enough
is enough, and the kids notgetting it, the teenagers not

(49:54):
getting it or whatever.
You know, sometimes we have tohave that tough love moment
where we're literally put in ourplace and you know I had to sit
there on a chair in the airportand think about what.
I've done and I've really had toput the pieces together.
It took me six months of nottalking to her to finally get to
a place where I was able totalk to her, because I was very

(50:18):
upset, but it took me a while toget past being upset, to
realize just what I was doingand how I was participating in
the chaos and the emotional andverbal abuse scenario in order
to stop it.
So she was.

That is an amazing lesson.
I'm sure it was very hard forher to do as well.

Can you imagine that what it must have felt like
for her on Christmas, nothaving me there and then and I
didn't get to see that part ofit, obviously, but I mean I just
can imagine she must have feltterrible and lonely and you know
, without her, her kids, butit's what she had to do she also
respected?
herself For herself.
Yeah, yes, that self love andself respect was a big lesson

(51:02):
for me to go oh, that's whatthat looks like.
That's what self love and selfprotection and setting healthy
boundaries actually looks likein its expression.

Right.
I used to have somebody say tome they're like how much are you
willing to put up with, likeliterally the stuff that I know
happens to you, how much are youwilling to put up with Because
it seems absurd, and I was likethat's just how life is and it's
actually not.

Well, I think that's what we tell ourselves
yeah, but I think we tellourselves that I think those
little, the little mantras andthe little statements and the
little words, we go well, that'slife, or I guess that's just
the way things are gonna be.
Whatever that stuff is right,who's telling you this?
Who's giving you these littlebits, these nuggets of bad
information about life?

(51:54):
It isn't that way, it doesn'thave to be.
That way you can have a happier, better, more well-rounded and
balanced existence and you canshow yourself love by enacting
some of these things havinghealthy boundaries, recognizing
when you're in a comfortablesituation and you don't wanna be
telling other people what yourpreferences are.
I mean communicating to otherpeople what your preferences for

(52:16):
a situation whatever.
How many of us just don't weabdicate that role where we
don't go?
Oh, I actually don't like that.
We just go, okay, whatever 100%me, 100% me.

I'm just like yeah, share whatever you want.
I mean, I am much better now,but that was how I grew up it
was.
If you wanted to be includedand accepted, you did that.
That's how I thought, that'sjust how you had to be.

Well, so I talk about this a little bit on my
speech too, and I say that weare rewarded for conforming.
Our entire doctrinae, nationand school, from the moment we
go to kindergarten on up, isnothing but a reward system for
conforming Conforming tostandardized testing, conforming
to outfits and wearing certainthings, conforming to knowledge

(53:05):
base, conforming to behaviorpatterns, conforming to
expectations from others aboutwhether or not you should fit in
, not fit in.
Wear your hair this way, wearthat outfit, do this date that
person, whatever it is.
We are constantly being toldwe'll be rewarded if we conform.
And what are we doing?
We are ultimately taking ouroriginal, authentic selves and

(53:25):
we're telling you you don't havea right to be here, you don't
have a right to exist, we'regonna do something different.
So I don't know what to do withyou, but sit down over there
and be quiet for a few years.

Yeah, you get punished you know, If you don't
conform, it's not even just thatyou get rewarded for conforming
, you get punished for notconforming.

If you don't.

And there's never any grace for any options.
You know, that's no.

There's no consideration for any other
options.

This is the way that it is and you have to abide
by it and sadly, I talked to mykids about how there's times
when you should fight that andthere's times where it's not
worth it to fight it, and thehard part is figuring out which
is which.

True, I think knowing the hill you're gonna
land stand on is a good lesson,also in life to learn.
I thought everything was abattle and everything was.
You know, I'm gonna show themand I'm gonna prove them wrong.
And I did stuff just becausepeople said I couldn't do it,
like I was like, yeah, I'm gonnashow you.
I mean, how much of my energyand my time did I waste doing

(54:43):
stuff because someone said Icouldn't do it?
Now did I learn a lot of things?
Yeah, I mean I gained a lot ofskill sets doing stuff I wasn't
probably 100% interested in itsimply because someone said you
can't do that.
And I was like, well, watch me,that beautiful, blissful
ignorance which is afforded toyouth for some particular reason

(55:04):
, we don't get it when we'reolder.

Oh, we're still young.

We're still young, yes, but this is like I
love I talk about this with whenI share an origin story with
Mary Kaye.
I used to be a performer, adancer, many years ago and I was
performing for Mary Kaye andher big conventions in Texas.
And she has this story.
She tells about the bumblebeependant that she wears and I was
escorting her on stage nightlyand we would stand backstage

(55:29):
while she was getting ready orwhatever to escort her on stage
and I always kept staring atthat little bumblebee and I was.
She's just like, are youlooking at my bumblebee?
And I was like, yeah, I just.
I mean, it's cute, it's apendant, it's got lots of
diamonds.
I just don't get it.
Like, what's the bumblebeeabout?
And she tells the story aboutthe bumblebee and how it's
physiologically not supposed tobe able to fly, but because it
doesn't know that the bumblebeeflies anyway, and I just it

(55:52):
stuck with me for so long and Irealized I was like, oh my God,
I'm like a bumblebee, Like Idon't know that I can't do all
these things, so I just go anddo them, you know, fail or fall
or whatever, it doesn't matterto me because I don't know that
I can't, and so I just go andtry.
And I think that's a beautiful,magical spirit to hold onto.

(56:14):
I don't know how many otherpeople have that or experienced
that.
I was blessed because myparents were like fly, you know
where do you want to go, how fardo you want to go, Like try
anything.
And that was great to a degree.
But it also lacked somestructure, I think, in terms of
guiding me down a set of placeswhere I was like well, focus on

(56:36):
one thing at a time I was verysort of you know, squirrel with
it, you know, for a long time.

I think we needed to combine our families because
mine was figure out somethingsafe that you are guaranteed.
So I had to take college leveltyping in sixth grade because my
mom said, well, you can be asecretary, but I don't
understand the statement.

Figure out something safe that can be
guaranteed when nothing in lifeis.
And my gosh the journey betweenthere and the other side after
college or after whatever I mean.
My God, anything can happen.
It's not like you're guaranteedto get to be successful at it
just because you pickedsomething safe.

Yeah, well, in the era that they grew up in,
you know, most people didlifetime employment.

That's right, that's right.

So my parents, my father's past.
He would be in his late 80s andmy mom is in her mid 80s, and
so that era that they grew up init was it was lifetime
employment and at that point intime women could be nurses,
teachers or secretaries.
And apparently I wasn't goingto be a nurse or a teacher, but
my mom thought I could be asecretary.

(57:53):
I don't know why, I don't knowwhat skill I had.

Well, not with your passion for UPC codes, I
mean.
Well, I clearly did not followthat path.

But I will tell you, my typing skills are out of
this world.
I can type at like 120 minutesof work.
Yeah, I wish I'd heard I Wordsa minute.

I'm a master hunt and pecker, but that means
that I also have to have wordspell on, because if I look up
for the screen, all of the redlines are so much red.
I have to go back and fixeverything because I can't.
I just I suck at typing.
I have terrible handwriting too, and I always felt bad about
that?

Yeah, I do too.

All right.
So I have another question foryou.
I want to dive in a little bitfurther for this book, ladies
and gentlemen, stop the Break byJeanette Barrett, which is out
now In chapter two.
This is a scary moment for you.
You had a real scare where youfelt your son came to you and
uttered these terrifying words.

(58:55):
I think the world would bebetter off without me.
And you go on to say that youfelt this intense fear.
You had lost a cousin tosuicide and their parents were
still dealing with it to thisday, and you were terrified that
he would kill himself, eventhough he didn't use those
specific words.
But your mind went there andyou tried to comfort him by

(59:16):
wanting to hold on to him tightand tell him that he's worthy
and that he's a good person, andto let him know that he's loved
and that the world wouldn't bebetter off without him.
Now, I've had those thoughts somany times, and I think that's
something that a lot of peopleface in their life, when there's
these moments that you think,oh, the world would just be so
easier, wouldn't it, if I wasn'there anymore.

Can you?

take us back into that moment, as a parent
specifically, of course.
But then, when you heard thosewords, where were you?
What were you thinking?
What happened?

So my son I can't remember his nine or 10 at the
time he came to me and didexactly what he said.
He said mom, I think the worldwould be better off without me.
And my world completely stoppedin that moment.
Imagine, and I don't know how,because I don't remember
expelling my breath, but all ofa sudden I had no breath.

(01:00:13):
But I also had to be his parent, even though I was scared.
He needed me to be strong andso I hugged him and I'm like why
do you say that?
Nobody, of course not.
And as I was going through it, Irealized this was something
that was bigger than anything Icould possibly deal with on my

(01:00:35):
own.
I didn't know what to say, Ididn't know what to do, and so I
ended up contacting a therapistand said this is what's
happened, and unfortunately,because, as you said, I had lost
a cousin to suicide and sadly,since then I've had several
friends whose children have alsodied by suicide and I had no

(01:01:00):
idea if that's what he wasthinking, what he wasn't.
I didn't know at the time thatit's OK to talk to any of your
kids about suicide and by sayingthat word to them it won't make
them more or less likely toactually it doesn't.

Michael Devous (01:01:17):
It doesn't open the door.

Janet Barrett (01:01:18):
It does not open the door, it doesn't close the
door, it doesn't do anything.
It's simply a conversation.
But I didn't know that.

Well, and the thing too, I think, on this is
that kids are also learninglanguage.
They're learning how to expressthemselves in a world where
words don't make sense.
And, by the way, the Englishlanguage is the worst.
I mean the way we use words inthe English language.
Certain words mean this andcertain words mean that they
both sound exactly the same.
A child trying to figure thatout and then also learning to

(01:01:48):
express their feelings and theiremotions about their place in
this world might say I think theworld will be better off
without me.
I would wonder what experienceshe had had up to that moment
that got him to that conclusionthat he understood enough to
make that statement.

The therapist that ended up working with him.
He called me two or three weeksafter he started with him and
he said Janet, I think I knowwhy he said that to you.
I was like, oh my gosh, please,why, what was it?
What can we do?
He was like because he thoughtthat the bad thoughts he had

(01:02:30):
about other people, that he wasthe only person that had those
thoughts.
Now, the bad thoughts that hehad were like I hate my brother,
he's a jerk, or that person cutme off, they're gross or
whatever.
This is a nine-year-old kid, sothe kind of language that they
had.
But he thought nobody else hadthose thoughts, that he was the

(01:02:53):
only one in the world andbecause of that he shouldn't be
here.
He had no idea, wow.

I mean, I get it , I totally understand, I
totally get it Like he's verysensitive apparently and it
feels very empathic to somedegree.
He has a complete empath and Isaid to him I'm measuring his
feelings, like he's measuringthem against other people, how
it might affect other people ifhe feels this way and it's so

(01:03:22):
advanced.

I will say, until I went through this with him
and I guess I'm proud to admitit and not proud at the same
time I don't think I ever reallyrealized that, that everybody
has those thoughts.
I never took the time to sitand just realize that.

(01:03:44):
Intellectually, yeah.
But if you don't actually sitthrough it and have that
cognitive awareness, yes, itgets hard to go through and be
like, oh, you're right,everybody does.

And if somebody doesn't tell you that, as a kid,
what are you supposed to knowExactly?
I mean, we live in our ownheads.
We have no grasp orunderstanding for how other
people feel, think or behave.
We only see them through a veryset of specific, filtered
lenses and experiences that areafforded us by our family, our
family, home and our world.

(01:04:17):
And then, if you go out a stepfurther, the media that children
would consume could consumemovies, tv shows, things like
that don't necessarily evershare the perspective of a kid
going through this stuff, like Idon't know that it's actually.
I mean, unless it's an afterschool special, I don't know

(01:04:40):
that we would have encounteredwhat other kids are thinking.
I think I was blessed because Ididn't care.
I was one of thoseself-absorbed children.
I'm still self-absorbed.
People will say that I'm sure,but I never thought about what
other people thought and thatdidn't occur to me until much
later.

(01:05:00):
So I love that he was sosensitive to that, being
concerned about his thoughtsbeing damaging in some way to
the world.
I mean, his understanding ofthe world was such a small space
and yet he could think that hisimpact and his presence there
was not a good thing because hewas having bad thoughts.

Yep, exactly, it was a relief to get that
information.
But then I also realized andthat's part of what ended up
driving me to this and talkingto people about it is we don't
tell kids that we don't evenlike adults.
To your point, adults don'tacknowledge it.

(01:05:42):
I heard this statistic and I'mnot a big statistics person,
even though I do like data.
I don't relate to statistics ona personal level, but I heard
this statistic.
I love True Crime Podcast.
Yes, Hello.
They oh yeah.

My favorite murder shout out.

And they oh, that's so good, sorry, ok, they
had this statistic and I can'tremember specifically which
podcast it was, but that over50% of the people Will report,
so they will admit to this thatthey have thought about how they
would kill someone else.

(01:06:22):
Not that they'd actually do it,but like would you run them
over, would you stab them, wouldyou shoot them?
50% of the people admit thatthey have had some thought about
that, not that 50% have doneanything bad or anything, but
just simply had the thought.

I think, if you can see my face and I realize
right now it's because I'mtrying to recall whether or not
I had those thought.
I've thought about myselfThousands of times.
Yeah all the different ways andI'm so self-absorbed that I
can't harm this.
I want to remain pretty and Idon't know.
I don't know how.
I don't like bleeding, so Ican't do that.

(01:07:03):
So you're totally keeping itright, like, but it's so funny
that I would have these thoughtsabout, like you know, I would
be better off dead and then go.
Well, I wonder how I would doit and then go through all the
processes of thinking, oh, butthat's gonna be too hard.
You know what I only thinkabout.
What if I throw up?
But I don't like that at all.
Nobody wants to drown, so youknow what I mean.
I can literally Go through thesteps, but then it comes to

(01:07:24):
thinking about whether or not Iwanted to kill somebody.
I've had those feelings arelike oh, I want to kill you, and
like you know that, but I don'tknow that I've ever thought
Would I lay out the plastic,would I use a butcher knife?
What I?
You know I'm saying like Idon't think it's ever.

And I don't think it's like they don't get to the
real details, but it's morelike you're like oh my gosh, you
know I would do something andthis is what I would do 50% and
I think what 50%.
So to me, what was crazy wasthat 50% of the people actually
admitted to it, which, to me,knowing statistics, there's more

(01:08:00):
.
Oh, there's a lot more peoplethat probably have thought Even
if it's, you know, just apassing, fleeting thing, people
have those bad thoughts.

Well, it's very alley-mick.
Deal with those little dreamymoments where you're like,
you're like at the behind yourcar Like oh no.
I'm not gonna run you over atpromise, but what do I want to?

Well, there's times you're like wouldn't that
just be?
Oh sorry, Whoops, I didn't seethat.
I swear um.
There's a meme out there thatit's showing somebody that sees
their ex and they say to theperson next to them you know the
meaning of I'd hit.
That has really changed overtime for me.

Yeah, I would agree.
Yeah, I used to call themthroat punch Thursdays Because
I'd be like don't, don't today,because it's throat punch
Thursday and I will punch youwith the throat like I've had
those moments, but I, I did that.

Okay, yeah, but it's you know, it's not the
thought, though, and that's whatI keep telling me, because I'm
like having those thoughtstotally normal.

Gosh, if we it's acting we responded and I'm not
disparaging your son, for youknow the way he responded to his
thoughts and thinking that itwe would be better off.
But if we all responded to ourthoughts that way, my god, the
number of thoughts we'd have.
I mean, I'd be a cocoon likewrapped up in a hospital
somewhere if I, if I reactedthat actively to all of the

(01:09:34):
fleeting Concepts and thoughtsthat enter this thing on a daily
basis, let alone and throughoutmy life.
You know, thank God forjournaling, yeah, thank God for
programs like this where I getto like Spill it out and get it
out in front of me so it's notin here.
You know we're working away andyou know planting seeds and
creating toxicity in my life.

(01:09:54):
I really believe that that's key.
I think there are people thatpush it down, shove it down,
pack it up.
You know, and I think there's,the body has a physical response
.
I think you, you manifestenzymes and proteins and
chemicals, that that that yourbody wouldn't normally do.
When you do that to yourselfand is that was your, was that

(01:10:14):
your did you experience physicalresponse to your
compartmentalizing?

You're oh yeah, I .
So in second grade I had ulcerswhat in second grade?
what second grader has officers?
And then I started having dizzyspells and I Went through a lot
of different, very oddIllnesses.

(01:10:42):
The last one that I had I wasin a situation that was very
stressful to me, and I wasprobably 47 at the time and I
apologize if this is too muchinformation for your audience,
but I had my period and Istarted hemorrhaging, and my

(01:11:07):
brother is a doctor and I meanliterally I had to stand in the
shower because I couldn't getout of it and go anywhere.
And I talked to my brother andhe said Janet, that's your body
telling you you have too muchstress, you have to go deal with

(01:11:28):
that.

It's interesting that he knew that about you in
that moment.
Yeah, and that you had internalbleeding.

Just from the amount of stress you were going
through, I mean I could gothrough my entire life and list
out all of the things that I had.
But yeah, the the start was theulcers in second grade and the
end was internal bleeding.
And Since I finally dealt withall of that and released all of

(01:11:56):
those emotions in that physicalway because they do know
Scientifically that that is veryimportant to do and so many
therapies have come out of it.
I actually just listened tothis amazing podcast with the
guest.
It was Ginger.
Oh shoot, she's a burlesquedancer, but she's also a dance

(01:12:22):
therapist.
So she has, she is a certifiedpsychological therapist and the
her specialty happens to be indance.
So we have come up with variousforms of therapy.
There's EMDR, there's tapping,there's dance, there's there's a
whole bunch of different areaswithin psychology now that use

(01:12:45):
physical expression to actuallyrelease all of your stress and
your emotions.
And we're beginning tounderstand how critically
important this is to do.
And that's because I kepttrapping all of mine.
My body is like, okay, you'vekept so much in there, we got to
release it somehow.

(01:13:06):
So, hey, guess what?
You get ulcers.
And then you know I got cankersores.
I one point in time I had 15canker sores in my mouth when I
was in seventh grade and I canremember it like it was so
painful, but I couldn't doanything about it.

No, your body was wanting to speak its truth.
Yeah, your mouth was physicallyresponding.

It was it.
My body was like Okay, we'rescreaming at you.
Yeah, but because I had sodisassociated, I never paid any
attention to it.
It was just oh, this is what mybody is going to do now.
Woo, this is fun.

I have a guest that's coming on the show it
this, I think it's next weekthat cat the cohe, who is a
burlesque dancer.
Her speaking platform and herworkshops do exactly the same
thing, where she uses the artform of burlesque and the art
form of performance to helppeople get more in tuned with

(01:14:00):
their bodies and their fears andtheir inadequacies, by allowing
them to place it in thispersona.
That gets to reenact thismoment, and I think it's just so
amazing.
I mean it's brilliant.
I think it's such an incredibleexperience.

I finally remember that was performer you
know I was gonna say you were adancer like a legitimate dancer,
and yeah so I had that physicalrelease.

I had the opportunity In fact this is
interesting that when I wasraped at 16.
I, the very next more wasovernight and I got drugged and
he dumped me out in the back ofa 711, behind a dumpster and
about and it was like near myschool.

(01:14:45):
But I managed to get dressedand get up and get to school
that morning and I was obviouslyhung over and recovering from
this experience or whatever.
But I wore my black trench coatand my hair was down.
I was very, you know, emubefore emu was emu, I think it
was goth.
We called it back.
This is the 80s.
But but I, my first class thatday was my theater class that

(01:15:09):
had an assignment where you hadto come to class with a prop and
you had to build a characteraround a prop.
And lo and behold for me.
I got called up, of courseimmediately, because I was
running late to present myselfin front of the class and their
job was to interrogate me, wasto question your character and
to find out things about yourcharacter.
And I sat down in this chairand I'm just like I'm gonna go
to the bathroom and I'm gonna goto the bathroom and I said I
want to find out things aboutyour character and I sat down in
this chair and I'm, you know,with the.

(01:15:29):
The chair was backwards.
You know how you sit down andsit on the chair and I'm like I
am sweating profusely drugs, I'msure, coming out of me left and
right from being, you know,drugged the night before and and
I'm just sick I'm gonna throwup, and I pull out of my pocket
this bottle of pills.
I can't think, make a sentence,let alone do much of anything.

(01:15:53):
Well, this is the 80s, late 80s, where teen suicide was a huge
deal.
This was going aroundeverywhere.
All the kids jumped on itimmediately and began asking
questions about what the pillswere for, what's the bottle for,
what are you planning on doing?
And I vomited the entireexperience in front of them.
I told them from top to bottomwhat I could remember, because I

(01:16:14):
woke up in the middle of itAfter being drugged.
I woke up in the middle of ittwice, trying to stop.

Oh, my God.

I described everything in great detail as
much as I possibly could, justspitting it out through this
persona of this individual inthis theater class and the
teacher had to stop the class.
Kids were crying.
I ran to the bathroom, threw uplike whatever was in my stomach
.
But the weirdest thing or themost brilliant thing about that

(01:16:43):
was the cathartic release ofthat moment for me.
Being able to immediatelyrelease my responsibility and
shame for what had happened inpublic to everybody immediately
placed that experience overthere and me over here, and I
was able to distance myself fromit and I didn't carry the

(01:17:04):
weight, I didn't carry the scars, I didn't carry the shame and
it was so cathartic and I thinka piece of me knew that.
I think a piece of my brainlatched on to that process and
from there forward, anytime Ihad a moment of tragedy, you
know thing that happened in mylife, somehow I went I'm going

(01:17:28):
to spit it out, I'm going tothrow it over here and then I'm
going to turn and pivot andbecome something else
immediately and that's sort of aform of dissociation.
I suppose it's a sort of a formof, of, of, of, of placing the
responsibility in the action onsomething other than yourself,
or a version of yourself, if youwill.
That can carry that for you andyou get to move on and reinvent

(01:17:51):
yourself and be oh, I'm freshand new.
You know I find it fascinating,but that was my I don't know
release, having that releasethat you talk about, you know I
was a.

I had a therapist once say something to me that
made me feel really good BecauseI had a lot of I don't have.
Shame is the right word, butit's probably the easiest word
over what, how I got through,the ways that I was able to cope

(01:18:31):
with what happened to me.
And my therapist looked at meand he said whatever you had to
do to get through is okay, andthat was a part of you was
telling yourself so I?

why didn't you know better?
Why didn't you do better?
Why didn't you like, were youlike, judging the very act of
coping, that those skills helpedyou survive?
Right, and now you were feelingsome sort of guilt and
responsibility for the coping.

Yes, because, like I drank, I did a lot of
stuff that were unhealthybehaviors, but it allowed me to
actually get through thesituation and I have to say him
saying that to me was soimpactful in my parenting

(01:19:23):
Because now, when my kids cometo me and I've had a couple of
them tell me about friends thatare using more destructive
behaviors.
A friend that you know, he Ilearned a new word.
He was turned and thatapparently means you're drunk
and high and I was like, oh,okay, like had to learn that

(01:19:46):
word.
But they came to me and I hadto explain to my kid I'm like
they're not doing that simply tobe drunk and high.
They're using that to cope withsomething.
I don't know what it is, I haveabsolutely no idea, but there is
not a kid out there that isn'tdoing that for some reason.

(01:20:06):
Maybe it's because they feelthe need to fit in, maybe it's
the need to forget something, orlike there's a million things
out there.
But I said, don't judge howthey're getting through what it
is.
Try and help them figure outwhat it is they're trying to get
through and find a differentway to do so, and having that

(01:20:29):
conversation with my kids hasallowed them to come to me about
a lot of things which I love.

Well it's interesting because I think you
know we as a society, one of thethings we learn to do not just
judging ourselves, we learn tojudge other people based on a
certain set of small criteriaand all of a sudden we think we
know what that person is doing,or why they're doing it, or that
they shouldn't be doing it atall, and we make some kind of
judgment about it.

Or what my one of my kids said is like well, what
could possibly be wrong intheir life?

I'm like bless Literally.

I could name five million things and I still
probably wouldn't cover them all.
Yeah, like, but you don't seeit.
Like that's the thing is.
You don't know what's going on,so don't assume nothing is
going on.
Because you think you know,assume something is going on.

I guess a beautiful way of tying that back
together for your son might be,just like you didn't know, that
all the thoughts in your headthat you're having Other people
are having the same thing.
They have that relationshipwith their thoughts and those
thoughts can sometimes drivethem a little crazy and they can
have when they need to dealwith it.
Sometimes we don't deal with itwell and as a result, yes, they

(01:21:46):
may experience this.
So exactly, well, I would loveto keep going because I we've
been going for a while and Ilove this, but I want to get to
a couple other things before wewrap this up.
We have to have an episode two.
I say we're going to have tohave a two part or we are.

I know it's like there's too much to dig into
here.
This is so much good stuff.

I may have to break this up into two episodes.
So you're on a journey as afemale entrepreneur, You're an
author, you're a publicmotivational speaker.
Do you have or have youdeveloped what you consider to
be a philosophy onentrepreneurship?

No to be completely honest, I do not have
a philosophy onentrepreneurship, what I tend to
believe, because I actually hadanother company before this.
I was an interior designer fora while and I was actually very
successful at it, but, longstory ended up deciding to have

(01:22:46):
kids and blah, blah, blah.
So, but similar to how you weretalking earlier about, nobody
told me I couldn't.
Yes, that's kind of what thisis.
It's not that anybody said, oh,if you can't possibly do that,
it was more like, well, yeah,sure, I can do it.

(01:23:06):
I feel like entrepreneurs havethis ability to be like well,
you know what other people havedone it, I can do it too.
I can have my own company, Ican write a book, and I've done
that in a lot of the parts of mylife.
I mean I kind of joke most ofthe things that I did in

(01:23:27):
parenting.
I kind of looked at it andthought, okay, how many people
before this have given birth?
I should be able to handle this, just putting it out there or
breastfeeding A lot of peoplehave figured it out before me.
I think I will be able to figureit out, and by having that

(01:23:49):
mindset it's really helped me belike you know what, you can do
it, and if I fail I'm okay,because I've lived with very
little like.
I can remember having toliterally count pennies to be
able to eat.
And you know, I tell the storyof I went, I was in Europe and I

(01:24:14):
would have to hide from thetrain connectors because I
didn't have enough money to payfor the fares.
And I'm like you know what.
I know I will be able tosurvive.
It will not be the life I haveright now, but I will still be
able to survive even if it fails.
And so I think for me that'swhat allows me to do the
entrepreneurial thing.

I think the reason why I.

Probably a lot of stupidity.

I think we all have a little bit of that.
I just just just enough.
You know what I mean.
The reason I ask that questionis I think that today's
definition of entrepreneurshipis this highly competitive space
where success is being definedby the amount of money you have,

(01:25:01):
the mansion you live in, thecars you drive, the you know
private jet that you got and allthese things entrepreneur do.
And I want the fearless roadthat explores entrepreneurial
journeys to realize that successisn't a measurement of those
material items, but more ameasurement of the journey that
you've taken to get where youare.

(01:25:23):
That success can be found andbe had and be defined by
enjoying, embracing andrelishing in those moments where
we don't fail, we learn, wefall, we might not succeed
specifically right, somethingmay not come to fruition, but
out of that journey comes all ofthe other things we bring with

(01:25:45):
us.
And that is not a failure, thatis a massive, massive success.
And for those of us that are onthe journey currently doing it,
then kudos to us and kudos toeverybody out there listening.
You know, these are the smallvictories and these are the wins
and these are success.
You are successful and it canbe found and it can be had.
My guest with us today is JanetBarrett.

(01:26:06):
Stop the break is the book thatshe has.
That's out right now.
You get it on Amazon.
It's been a joy sharing thistime with you and talking to you
.
Do you have three things you'dlike to leave?
Actually, I'm going to ask forthis little differently.
One is give me one challengeyou face and two things you want
to leave the audience with.
How about that?

Okay.
So the challenge that I face iskeeping myself honest with all
of the things that I now know.
So what I mean by that in alittle more detail is when I had
to finally admit to myself thatI was scared my fear is facing

(01:26:54):
my emotions when I finallyadmitted I had to do that to
truly become healthy.
I did it and I went whole hog.
I went through all of thatreally intense, but life doesn't
stop.

No.

And stuff keeps happening.
Yes, and I have to keep myselfhonest and keep doing this
process, because when I don't,it impacts my ability to really
thrive in life.
And so that's why I say, likethere's the surviving, which I
did for years and now I'mactually thriving.
And I had a very small exampleof that the other week where I

(01:27:36):
got something in the mail andI'm on the board of something
and there was an invitation thatcame out and I'm on the
committee that was sending outthe invite and so all of the
committee's names are on thereand my name was the only one
that was a single person.
All of the other ones were cops.

(01:28:00):
And it was the first time thatit really hit me that I don't
have a partner and in some waysI'm in the minority, especially
in this particular instance.
And that was hard.
I didn't create the life withmy four children without a

(01:28:22):
partner, and now here I am andit just really hit me and it
made me really sad and I ignoredit and it kept bugging me and
it would wake me up at night andfinally I sent a text to one of
my friends.
I said I had something reallystupid.

(01:28:43):
Just make me sad and she calledme right away and she's like
what is going on.
And I told her and I startedbawling as I'm talking about it
and I'm expressing it and I letit out and then guess what?
I was fine, I'm totally fine,like I moved on, but for several
days it stayed in me because Ididn't really fully own the fact

(01:29:07):
that I needed to release thatsadness.
And I have to keep myself honestand that, for me, is the thing
that is the challenge that Iface every single day.
So the two things that I wantto leave your listeners with is
one.
One of the ways that I keepmyself honest is I have a list

(01:29:29):
of things that I want to leaveyour listeners with, and I have
a list of things that I call mywarning signs.
So the way that I know that I'mnot being honest with myself, I
have some physical signs that Inow know to pay attention to.
One is my shoulders tense up, Iget headaches, I just have a

(01:29:51):
variety of things that happen.
My stomach starts to get upset,and so I've listed out all of
those things.
I have what I call activitiesthat I do.
Most of them involve socialmedia.
They I'm scrolling through.
I'm spending way too much time.
It also involves me avoidingpeople.
I'm an introvert by nature andso I will avoid people.

(01:30:14):
So I literally have printed outhere and it's attached to my
computer because I sit here allday long and there's a list of
things that I know.
If I start to see themhappening, I'm avoiding
something, I'm not being honestwith myself, and so I would
encourage everybody here toactually do that, to come up
with a list of things that youknow you do when you're avoiding

(01:30:37):
dealing with your life and youremotions, and if you keep it
someplace that you see, it willhelp keep you honest.

So that is one thing I believe Well, self love
is a practice and, by the way,everybody, you got here down
your fearless road, down thisroad, to this moment, practicing
all the other coping skills andmechanisms that we've used to
avoid dealing with life, toavoid dealing with emotions, to

(01:31:06):
avoid dealing with fear, toavoid dealing with a lot of
things, because that's how wecope.
Yeah, and it's okay, it'sabsolutely okay.

It is.

But today we know better and we can do better
.

Thank you, Maya.

Angelou, make your list.

Thank you, maya.

Angelou, make a list of love for yourself, ways
to sort of some self care, andcheck in with yourself regularly
, because it's important.
And if you need to check inwith us, you can check in with
us at the fearless roadcom.
If they want to check in withyou, janet, where do they find
you?

You can find me on my website at Janet hyphen
barrettcom and all of myconnections are there.
So if you want to follow me onany socials, you can find all of
the links there.

Yes, and of course, we will put the links
down below when you see this.
It has been an absolute joy anda pleasure for me.
I am so excited to have had youon the program today to share
your journey with us, yourfearless journey on the fearless
road podcast.
I definitely think we're goingto have to have episode two.
We need to revisit this becausethere's so much more to dive

(01:32:09):
into and to dig into and toshare.
But, audiences, thank you somuch for sharing your time with
us today, with your, yourblessed time, your ears, your
listening.
As I've said before, there areno new words, but there are new
ears to hear, and we hope thatthis has helped you on your
fearless road.
Thank you again, janet Barrett,thank you, stop the break, it's
out on Amazon.

Thank you so much .

Be fearless, you're welcome.

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03. Emotional Armor: Turning Pain into Power, Janet Barrett's Fearless Journey to Emotional Wellbeing

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