Ashlea Dillard – Compassion Fatigue

Air Date - 10 December 2025

Ashlea Dillard is a retired firefighter–paramedic who spent years on the front lines, witnessing both the strength of the human spirit and the weight of human suffering. That experience shaped the way she practices today as a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Certified Clinical and Transpersonal Hypnotherapist. Her formal education includes both an undergraduate and master’s degrees in Mental Health and Clinical Counseling from Colorado Christian University—training that grounded her in a strong clinical foundation while supporting her heart-led, passionate approach to healing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Perfect Life Awakening Show hosted by Royce Morales.
Royce has been a transformational facilitator, teaching groundbreaking spiritually based
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(00:31):
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are helping change the world to a higher consciousness place

(00:52):
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Speaker 2 (01:04):
Create your perfect life.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Here is your host, Rice Morales.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Hello, Welcome to my show. Everyone. I'm so glad you're here.
What an amazing topic we're going to get into today.
Compassion something that I'm sure all of us feel to
some degree. Let me adjust my camera there, but it
can just do a number on you. And my guest

(01:34):
today is going to talk about that, and some of
the things that you may not even realize are from
compassion fatigue, which is a very interesting new term. So
compassion really is a wonderful gift and it's so helpful,
it's so important. I talk about it all the time
in my courses. It comes from a deep experience of

(01:57):
empathy usually, which is actually why it's a problem, because
you're feeling empathy for someone based on your own pain
or your own unresolved experiences and trauma. So because of that,
it can be very triggering. You know, it should feel
natural and loving to help people and want to, you know,

(02:20):
relieve their pain and their suffering. But if it's coming
from a place of you know, I have this pain too,
and I want to help you, which is really I
want to help me, then it can be a problem.
So we're going to talk about that. And I think
at least for me, being handed the role of a
full time caregiver when my husband had his stroke eleven

(02:43):
years ago, very unexpectedly. Never in a million years would
I have anticipated being a caregiver, but I started to
have some of the symptoms that we'll talk about the
compassion fatigue symptoms, and I didn't even realize it. I
just thought, oh, yeah, you know, I'm a little tired,
a little stressed, but it was really starting to weigh

(03:06):
on me. So we'll talk about that a little bit too.
So let me introduce you to my guest, Ashley Dillard.
She is it doesn't look like she could be retired,
but she is a well retired firefighter paramedic and she
knows first hand about this common condition of compassion fatigue.

(03:28):
She dedicated years serving on the front lines, experiencing the
full spectrum of human experience, witnessing remarkable resilience in people
as well as profound suffering, and those formative experiences influenced
her current practice as a licensed professional counselor and certified

(03:49):
clinical and transpersonal hypnotherapist, and her formal education grounded her
in strong I'm sorry, where's my notes here? Grounded her
in strong clinical foundation, while supporting her heart led her
passionate approach to healing. And she does all kinds of

(04:11):
things that I'm going to have her explain in a minute.
But welcome, Ashley. I'm so glad you're here.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
Thank you. Yes, I'm so glad to be here and
glad that your little fur friend is here too. Mine
is also here, but he's one hundred and sixty pounds,
so he's not the lapdog he would be if he could.
But he's still in the room too.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Well, she decided to supervise today. This is Gigi, so
oh good. Yeah, she's the love of my life and
also caring for her so yes. Tell us first of all,
before we get into the topic, tell us your story.
Why did you choose to the profession that you did,
and why did you choose to leave? Tell us a

(04:55):
little bit about that.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
Yeah, I think ever since I was a kid, I
was born with this or just had this gift of
caring for other people. And I really it's one of,
like I said, my gifts that I think I had
for a very long time. And so with that I
went into you know, the older my adult years of

(05:20):
thinking of what what do we want this to look like?
How to what is going to be my dharma or
my mission? And that was in a way to serve
other people. And I had always had a real affinity
for medicine and the way the body worked and just
the fascination around like how does how do things actually
work in this really neat sense around medicine. So my

(05:43):
initial path was to go be a nurse and to
do that. Ultimately I got introduced to EMS and the
Fire Service, and that became like so awesome to me
that you are not sitting at a desk or someplace
working the same job nine to five, but you are

(06:04):
in an environment that is constantly changing and you're constantly
having to problem solve and navigate and use your skills
to do whatever you need to do. And being a
paramedic it kind of allows you to be like a
doctor in a sense, like out there in the field
doing really cool stuff and just helping people and solve

(06:29):
problem solving in the moment. So I really grasped onto
really loving that and liking the unpredictable side of things
and using skills, using knowledge, and just getting to show
up in different ways for people at different times. So
that was kind of my introduction into it all, which

(06:50):
led me to I spent just short of ten years
in fire and EMS and towards the end of my career, well,
early on in my career, I was inspired by a
mentor to come up with some kind of alternative plan,
like in case you don't want to do this work
for twenty or thirty years. What do you want to do?

(07:13):
How do you want to use your gift instead? And
at that time I was just like a young gung ho, like,
I don't know what you're talking about. For twenty years
and retire. And I'm so glad that I actually listened
to what he said and pursued something else as well,
so that I didn't feel like I was going to
be stuck somewhere not have another option. So I was

(07:37):
going to school at the same time that I was
working online and finished my master's degree mental health and
clinical counseling, and that what I do now was all
very much meant to be my retirement backup plan, so
after you know, kind of the next season of life.
And it really kind of took a fast forward approach

(07:59):
when I started to notice how this choice of career
was no longer serving me in the best way possible
and it wasn't the best choice. And I was really
getting inspired at the same time to be a different
kind of helper. And I could see so much pain

(08:20):
and suffering in the people that I worked with, which
became my ultimate inspiration my dharma to serve others and
to end the suffering essentially, and to see how so
many of us who choose these careers where we're taking
care of others, we're serving others, is really dictated by

(08:42):
a lot of old memories, a lot of old beliefs,
and a lot of old narratives that we hold that
we seek this career as a bit of a band
aid to a bigger problem, or we want to be
seen as the hero, or we I want to always
feel like we're needed or accepted or whatever it is.

(09:04):
It's all different for us, but similar in the same way.
But I could see how this suffering was just being perpetuated,
and I could see how this for another ten years
was not going to be a good idea for me,
And so my body started to change quite a bit.
My hormones started screaming at me, trying to help me see,

(09:25):
like you need to do something different, and experiencing these
profound levels of compassion, fatigue, and burnout that made me
not excited to do the job, and so I decided
to retire and to walk away, which was incredibly difficult.
It was really hard, especially being a female, being in

(09:48):
a male dominated industry, working really really hard to get
where I was and to have that position. A lot
of people call it the golden because it's difficult to
get to that spot, and many people that I was
throwing away everything that I worked for, but I knew,

(10:09):
like deep down in my heart, deep down in my soul,
like there was a bigger purpose and a bigger mission.
And that leads me to where I am now, and
I get to do work with people now on really
discovering remembering who they really truly are, and getting out
of all these old illusions and these lies that they've

(10:30):
been telling themselves and helping them to really heal and
to live like just a profoundly amazing life. And so
it doesn't it doesn't get much better than this, I think,
to do this kind of job, and to do this
I hesitate to even call it work because it doesn't
feel like work. It just feels like again living in

(10:52):
my dharma, living in my mission, and it just flows
so easily. So it's it's really neat, how like everything
in every step of my journey has led me to
where I am now today.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
So before we get into depth about what compassion fatigue
actually looks like, some of the symptoms of it tell
us a little bit, excuse me about your work that
you do with people to help them get past all
of that stuff.

Speaker 4 (11:21):
So the primary modality that I like to work in
and that I've found over the years is like, so
much of this stuff is stored in our subconscious mind,
where our beliefs, our memories, our emotions, all of that
is there. And what I found a lot with traditional
therapy type methods, if you want to call them traditional

(11:43):
type therapies, is we're only addressing symptoms. We're just addressing
you know, anxiety or anger or smoking or whatever it is.
We're only addressing symptoms. But a lot of us can
relate to that doesn't last like and it doesn't actually work.
And that's why I think some people who maintain therapy

(12:07):
for ten plus years with still having the same symptoms.
It's because the root of the problem has never been addressed.
And so that is the kind of work that I
do is like, let's get in and rip the root
out of the ground. So we and that comes along
with the even the neuroplasticity, and then the neuroside of

(12:29):
things is building these new networks and these new pathways
within the brain as well but we have to get
in and we have to clear the blockages. We have
to clear. I like to use the word sand scars
a lot, like clear those blocks that those old mental
impressions that are causing you to have the same symptoms

(12:50):
or the same patterns and behaviors showing up in your life. So,
through primarily hypnosis, I do work with the subconscious and
the conscious mind together so that we can clear those
beliefs out of the way, and we're basically essentially it's
the return to love. It's the return to remembering who

(13:11):
you are. And it's so incredible, like how transformational not
only has it been in my life, but to see
other people as well, it's just so awesome. So it's
kind of like an overall view of the work that
I do is like I don't do the fur f
style of therapy. I'm very much like, let's get in

(13:32):
there and figure this out. Let's find what these blocks
are so that you can heal and transform them and
live like a totally liberated way of life.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
And you were saying before we went on that you
actually get down into past lives and between lives and
all of that with your work. So how does that
come into play.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
Yeah, So I'm one of the primary methods with hypnosis
is sometimes we care the old sand scars, the old
mental impressions from past lives. Whether they're real or metaphorical,
it doesn't necessarily really matter. It's still affecting us in
the here and now and the through regression, whether it's

(14:18):
childhood regression, natal regression, past life regression, we're able to
go in and clear those old beliefs into actually you know,
allow the life first energy to move again when those
blocks are there. And it's really incredible, Royce, when you
see how this even shows up like in physical symptoms

(14:38):
for people as well too, where if people have you know,
consistent neck pain or something you know that shows up
physically now that doesn't really have a good rhyme or
reason to it. It's so crazy how we carry that
stuff with us and it could be something from you know,
a past life that's there, but that stuff has to

(15:00):
get cleared out of the way because we're just re
living that karmic pattern over and over again if we're
not going in there and doing that work to clear
those out of the way. And the regression is the
primary modality and the way that I like to work
with that in order to do that.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Well, we are absolutely on the same wavelane. That's exactly
what I do as well. Yeah awesome. So yeah, yeah,
So let's I guess, first of all, just maybe give
a definition of compassion fatigue and maybe did you feel
it yourself? Were you going through that personally?

Speaker 4 (15:42):
Yes, absolutely, I mean for sure I felt it when
I was in the job.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
I didn't know.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
I mean, it's a very catchy phrase and it's used
a lot, especially within you know, the world of you know,
being a first responder, or even for military like or
even thinking of you know, working in the hospital or
those kind of caregivers. Is that compassion fatigue. It's very catchy,
But I think under it took for me getting out

(16:11):
of it, for one, because it's always kind of difficult
to see it when you're in the midst of it,
but to get out of it and understand what's going
on with it and looking at you know, it's often
thrown out there with the phrase of burnout or feeling
that burnout. But what I've come to learn and understand,

(16:32):
and I could see it in myself for sure, is
understanding it more from a nervous system perspective as well,
so recognizing the symptoms that are coming out of the
nervous system. So whether it was in you know, a
flight state where I was constantly overworking or overthinking or

(16:54):
being hyper vigilant and that leading to feeling anxious or
panicky even at times are like for me, it's definitely overwhelmed,
Like I can get to that point where everything feels
very overwhelming, and sometimes even seeing that OCD type tendencies
show up where you want to be in control of things.

(17:16):
You want to make sure that you know what's going
to happen and when, whether it's in that flight state
or if it's in something of more of what I
call or we call the freeze or functional freeze state
of the nervous system, where we feel like shut down.
Essentially we're isolated, we want to dissociate, We do the

(17:37):
whole zombie scrolling method, you know, where you're just on
your phone with them perpetually. But it's that profound level
of exhaustion, and I think for me, it was helping
me to understand what my nervous system, the protective outputs
that were coming from my nervous system and understanding that
and helping people also understand that as well. But mainly

(18:03):
I think a lot of this with the compassion fatigue,
came from a lot of old beliefs and all old
narratives that I held as well. Too is the fawning state,
as I call it, of where I need to be
a people pleaser, I need to take care of everyone else,
I need to put everyone else before me, which of

(18:23):
course is celebrated like in a lot of culture and
society to always put everybody before yourself to your own
detriment at times usually and not really having an identity anymore,
because I've always like had to either take care of
others or fit in with others because I wanted that

(18:45):
sense of acceptance or love or belonging. And so I
think understanding and breaking that apart and realizing that's a
huge part of compassion fatigue is recognizing where this is
showing up within our nervous system and what protective outputs
are showing up from that. And as you mentioned before,

(19:08):
like the impath side of things is realizing when you
are an impath, which there's a lot of impaths out there.
Some people have just gotten really good at shutting it off,
but they still are impaths. It's a basic human nature
to care for other people. But realizing that puts us
that even more of a if you want to say

(19:31):
risk for lack of a better word, of feeling this
compassion fatigue because we feel so deeply for other people.
And I think for me, what helped a lot in
this is breaking it down and seeing as like compassion
is love, seeing pain and suffering in other people, and
it takes the unwinding of realizing like that it's not

(19:53):
necessarily about taking everything on for everyone else and feeling
that that heavy weight, that burden, or that deep responsibility
to fix things or to make it better for everybody else.
But it's really just stepping out of that, which is
going to cause fatigue, like any time when we do that.

(20:14):
But letting go of the experience is letting go of
others' emotions, letting go of thoughts, letting go of owning
whatever kind of outcome that we're looking for or not
owning what doesn't belong to us. And it's sneaky, and yeah,
I'm sure you could feel this too, is you don't
always feel this coming on, You feel like I'm okay,

(20:37):
like this is just the normal. This is what I
need to do. But you don't always realize that that's
what it is when it shows up. But we have
to make that distinction where we're not we're not attaching
ourselves to other things. I think that's massively where compassion
fatigue shows up.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah. So I talked in the beginning about kind of
the difference between compassion versus empathy, and I find that
most of the time, when you feel empathy towards someone,
it's because they're showing you something unresolved in yourself. And
when you resolve stuff in yourself, you can then feel compassion.

(21:21):
It can transfer and become a pure state of I
love you, and I see what you're going through, and
let me assist you, versus I've got to save you
because this must be so awful because I've been there
and I haven't resolved it yet, and you're triggering me
that kind of thing. Yeah, is that kind of what
you're saying too?

Speaker 4 (21:43):
Oh? Absolutely. I think everybody we are in interaction with
as a mirror teacher for us, and it's that pushing
of your triggers, pushing of your buttons that's showing you
what's actually unresolved within yourself, and it's kind of that

(22:03):
resistance towards like pushing things away. It's almost like I
see this and you I don't want to deal with
this in myself, so I'm pushing it away. I'm resisting it.
And we we all know whatever we resist is definitely
going to persist back with the fierceness, and so yeah,
I think it's always that way. It's always that case.

(22:25):
Is like everyone is a great teacher for us, and
it's part of the power and doing the work. The
work to clear these things is you're clearing the buttons
before there are even buttons. So instead of waiting for
life to push your buttons, is like, just go in
and do the work to clear them. And then it's
just not a thing, like it's so much, it's so simple,

(22:47):
but like we have a hard time wrapping our mind
around it.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah. Yeah, I tell people this is simple, and they're like, what, No,
it's hard. Well, because there's so much assistance to looking
within and seeing what's being reflected. So yeah, yeah, So
I guess we should probably take a break at this point,
but I'd like to talk to you some more about

(23:12):
some of the symptoms of compassion fatigue and what people
can do about it, because I'm as we're talking, it's
getting more and more clear to me that compassion fatigue
is just another name for fear. You know, we're afraid that, oh,
what if I do this wrong? Or what if my
husband falls down during the day when I'm not watching him,

(23:34):
or what if? You know, there's all these what ifs
because we're so afraid when we're in this position. Excuse
me of caring for others. So I'd like to talk
more about that as well as again talk about some
of the symptoms. So we'll be right back. I'm talking
to Ashley Dillard and we shall be right back. Maybe

(23:59):
we lost our interview. Where are you Chris? All right? Well,
we'll help some dead air here. Well, yes, break, Yes.

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Meals to those in need. Join us at Feeding America
dot org. Okay, welcome back, Sorry about that little delay. Anyway,
I'm talking to Ashley Dillard. We're talking about compassion fatigue.

(26:49):
And something dawned on me when I first became my
husband's caregiver and my best friend said to me, now, Royce,
you need to always make sure to take care of
yourself because you know, the caregivers always die before the
people they're taken care of. And I thought, that's interesting.
I wonder if that's true. I know that that's that

(27:10):
was true about my mom. She was taking care of
my dad and she passed before he did. So statistically,
have you heard anything like that.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
I don't know any specific statistics, but it makes sense
to me based on like if you think about we all, sorry,
we all have some amount of life force energy with us,
and when we are either suppressing things or we're you know,
giving out too much of that, like you're on, you

(27:43):
only have so much. So I could definitely see how
in someone who is a caregiver, you're expending more of
your life force energy quicker than somebody perhaps and you're
taken care of. But I don't know that would be
really good statistic. I'll have to like dig into the
a little bit more and see.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
I mean it does make sense because you know, if
you look at being a caregiver in terms of or
you know, the compassion that I was just talking about,
coming from a place of fear, you know, then you're
in constant fear. I know, for a short while after
my husband's stroke, I was like terrified, like what if

(28:23):
I do something wrong? What if I do this? You know,
there was that kind of stuff going on. And slowly
I've resolved that and I trust the process and you know,
I trust myself more and I'm not coming from that fearful,
anxious place anymore. So, but yeah, I could see that
people that don't resolve that stuff would be you know,

(28:45):
walking time bombs.

Speaker 4 (28:48):
Yes, yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah, I think it's and I
like to there's an old story that always comes up
around like compassion fatigue that I think fits really well.
It helps And I like speaking in metaphors a lot too.
Working with the subconscious mind. We know it's helpful to

(29:08):
work in metaphors. But it's a story of like a
village that was set by a river, and the villagers
became very busy with always drawing water, like going to
the river and needing water for crops or for their
homes or whatever, and over time they became so fatigued,
so tired, and they begin to think that this must

(29:32):
be because of the very act of drawing water, that
going to the river and getting water every day is
causing the suffering, causing me to be so fatigued. And
a wise elder pointed out, like, it's not the river
that's causing your suffering. It's not the river that's causing
you to be fatigued. The river is actually your source

(29:55):
of life. It's your reluctance, your hesitation towards the flowing
embrace of the river, like trying to worry or trying
to control, or trying to think about every drop in
the river. That's what's making you exhausted. And I think
that fits so well when I think about compassion, because

(30:19):
compassion is just like the river, and when we just
let it flow, when we meet others suffering with like
just love instead of this resistance, like we're actually nourished
by that thing. And that's what was a huge shift
for me in realizing like, Okay, I don't need to

(30:41):
try to change this. I don't need to try to
make this differently for either myself or the other person.
But I literally need to just be so intentionally present
in the moment that allowed me to have such a
more open heart and to really just embrace that rejuvenation
that comes with allowing that to be and not coming

(31:04):
from that place of fear that you're talking about that
how am I going to predict every single outcome? Or
it's just exhausting. It takes so much life force energy
to do that. It's exhausting. And I think that's really
the key to compassion fatigue, is that resistance or that
desire to change things, or that just feeling like you're

(31:27):
perpetuating your own suffering because you're doing all of this
out of fear, and that where that fear is coming from.
It's so wild when you look at it with a
different perspective.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, So, as you're talking, I'm being reminded of something
else interesting that happened when I started being my husband's caregiver.
We went to a life coach for a while at
his rehab hospital, and she was wonderful, she was amazing,
and for some reason, she kept mentioning to me that

(32:03):
I was not really that compassionate toward my husband. And
I kept thinking, that's really an odd thing to say.
I was just being supportive and you know, go team Go,
and you know, I felt a lot of compassion for him,
I thought. And then a few years later, I fell
and broke my hip and I was literally not able

(32:28):
to walk for three weeks, and I was in the
hospital and all kinds of stuff, and this life coach
contacted me and she wrote me this little note and
she said, now you can feel compassion for your husband.
And I read that and I thought, how interesting. But
I think there's some truth to it. I think the
universe wants you to understand really what's going on with

(32:52):
the person that you're helping or supporting or taking care
of or saving in your case, so that you can
really relate to it. And it kind of shifted things
for me. It's not that I then felt more empathy.
I just kind of was able to be in his
shoes a little bit better. So how what do you
think about that?

Speaker 4 (33:13):
Mm hmmm, Yeah, what I hear you speaking to is
the experience of like understanding for one like I, even
though I may not have been through the same experience
as you, like I can have that understanding that there
have been many times within my life that I've just
been a human being doing the best you could do
in this human experience. But then also the power of

(33:38):
the commonality that you're bringing up is that recognizing how
we've all been there and you know, it's all kind
of one experience anyways how you look at it, but
that it's just like finding that human connection. And that's
I think part of when you asked me earlier about

(33:58):
how how to people navigate compassion, fatigue or how do
you move through it? Is that remembering you need to
allow yourself to have your feelings, your experience, your emotions
to this and not be suppressing or pushing anything down,
but having the open heart experience which allows you to

(34:19):
tap into that deep commonality with others. And that is like,
that's the river of life that that story is speaking to,
is how oh I can understand, like I can know
or resonate what this feels like, I can feel this
with you, but just allowing it to flow allowing it
to move and not holding on to it in any

(34:40):
way is what the power in that. But there's so
much power in understanding and commonality with one another. It's
the human, the divine human interaction that we get to have.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah, And like you said, the truth is we've all
experienced these things somewhere along our timeline of lifetimes. So
a lot of it is just tapping into that. But
the other thing I was thinking as you're talking, is,
at least for me, I found that I had so
many expectations. You know, I knew nothing about strokes, so

(35:14):
I just thought, oh, he had a stroke, he'd be
better in a couple of weeks, you know. And it's
been eleven years and he's made progress. But the only
time I get really upset is when I think he
shouldn't he should be better than this now, he should
be able to talk, and what do you mean he
doesn't understand me? You know, And I have that little
voice that goes on in there, this is this is

(35:34):
not how it should be. Yes, expectations are a huge
I mean they're you know, global in terms of how
they run our lives. But especially I think as a caregiver,
it's just yeah, you got to get past that.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
Yeah, yeah, past the expectations, past that just kind of
attachment to an outcome. I think that's what that was
what really, at least I noticed for me, that's what festered. Really,
any like anger showing up or irritability or shortness that

(36:11):
I would see is like I had an expectation to
an outcome that I wanted it to be, and I
it really like deep, because we've spoken to deep roots
of things, I could look and see this is becoming
from a place where I don't feel secure. I don't
feel safe, I don't feel in control. And so that's
where this was all coming from. And especially as you've

(36:32):
spoken to with a stroke and not knowing, I mean,
they're so different for everybody, and not knowing or understanding
like what does recovery look like or rehabilitation or what
is this? And you have this idea like he should
be better by now, he should be doing these things
by now, and he's not, and it's frustrating, and it's
coming from that deep place of like I don't feel

(36:54):
I don't feel secure, I don't feel safe in this.
I don't feel secure and safe for him either. So
It's that reflection again of what's going on that is
being reflected back to you. It's so powerful to look at.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
When I talk about expectations with my students, I always
say that if you have an expectation on someone else,
or on life or your career, whatever it is, it's
really an expectation on yourself that you're in denial of.
So I had to look at the fact that I
guess I'm not a very good caregiver because my husband
hasn't gotten better yet, or I expect that I could,

(37:33):
you know, magically heal him and I couldn't. So yeah,
it's always on some level, it's about having an expectation
on ourselves. So yeah, So I before our talk, I
went on Google and I asked, tell me about compassion fatigue,

(37:55):
and I found one website that gave a doc whatever
a list of all of the symptoms of compassion fatigue,
and I had there's probably twenty on this list. I thought,
oh my gosh, amazing. I'm not going to read the
whole list, but I do want to read a couple

(38:16):
of them, because I thought they were interested. Feeling isolated, overwhelmed, drained,
easily triggered into anger and resentment. You no longer care
about things you used to care about. I think the
anger and irritability, I think is a really important one

(38:38):
because sometimes I'll find myself getting really angry at my
husband for no reason, no reason at all, and I said, oh,
it's just because I'm tired. Well, no, you know, it's
because talk about that before I give you my viewpoint
about that.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
Mm hmm. Yeah, it's I mean what I hear you
saying and like taking a guess that being that I
know you just a little bit. But like for me,
when I see anger ir ability show up is because
I'm attached to an outcome. I want something to happen
the way that I want it. I want to be
in control, I want it to go the way that
I want it to go, and it's not happening. And

(39:14):
that's when I find anger and irritability show up for me.
Is that, Okay, I'm holding onto something or I'm not
willing to accept that it is the way that it
is and that it's coming from that for me. Do
you feel like that resonates for you?

Speaker 3 (39:32):
Oh yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (39:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
And again you know, expectations cause anger, so yeah, yes, yeah,
all of that. Let's see if there's anything else on
this list. Misusing alcohol or drugs, just reduced decision making ability,
feeling disconnected, decrease satisfaction or enjoyment with work or life.

(39:58):
That's pretty pretty complete list there.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
Yeah. Yeah, well, and a lot of that comes from
the nervous system side part that I was kind of
speaking to earlier, and it I'll use another like short
metaphor for this too, because I again, like I said,
I love to work in metaphors, so I like to

(40:23):
help people understand and empower them because these symptoms, especially
the ones that you mentioned, it could be really frustrating
and hard to understand, like why am I feeling angry?
Why am I feeling irritable? And so understanding that this
these are aspects of our nervous system that are showing
up as well because they're coming from those deep roots

(40:45):
of places, but their protective outputs towards stress or towards trauma,
or towards a threat response essentially. So if we think
about like watching the Discovery Channel and they're there is
a gazelle that's just hanging out in the serengetti eating grass,
and it's the nice classical music and everything is good,

(41:08):
and then the music change is the British guy gets
on there and there's a lion that's creeping in through
the grass towards the gazelle, and eventually the gazelle is
going to catch sight of the lion. And what happens
physiologically is very similar to what happens to us as
we get flooded with our stress hormones. So we're talking

(41:28):
about adrenaline and cortisol flooding the system and everything kicks
into back into the omlegata, the lizard part of our brain,
which says we need to do something now if we're
gonna stay safe and stay alive. And this is all
exactly what happens to us in the human body as well,

(41:51):
is the same thing. So flight is what I describe
as when the gazelle decides to just take off running,
So it's it's is to outrun, outlast, outplay the lion
and hoping that the lion will just get tired and
end up leaving it alone. So the symptoms we see
in us that show up are that overworking, overthinking, overachieving,

(42:16):
that hyper vigilance, that perfectionism shows up all out here too,
feeling like, I gotta have all the steps lined out
so that I know everything is going to be safe
and okay. On the other side, fight looks like a
UFC match between the gazelle and the lion. So the
gazelle takes the approach if I just beat the lion,

(42:37):
if I get a good knockout shot, he'll go away
and leave me alone. For us, this looks like being
hyper aggressive, irritable, frustrated, short fused, and both flight and
fight have a really hard time of down regulating, so
rest does not feel RESTful, like if you you sit

(42:59):
down on the couch and you're hoping to take a
nap or to rest, is like you're still out of ten.
It's rest feels very difficult, and sleep becomes very difficult.
So if you're losing sleep, especially if your mind is
constantly turned on, that can be a huge symptom of
this showing up. Freeze and functional freeze is where the

(43:20):
gazelle falls over and plays or plays dead essentially, and
it's like those fainting goats you see the really awesome
videos of. It's hoping that the threat will be like, well,
this wasn't that fun, Like this is kind of boring.
I'm just gonna take off and leave. So for us,
it looks like isolating, disassociating, with drawing, numbing out, and

(43:44):
functional freeze is really interesting. And this is where I
think a lot of people can resonate and find. This
is you're dumping from fight in flight, which is heavy
sympathetic nervous system, into the freeze. Oh. Usually when you're
at work or you're taking care of somebody, you're doing
something you have to do, you're in that fight or

(44:05):
flight stage, and then as soon as you're done with that,
you dump into freeze. And so now I want a
numb Now I want to withdraw. Now I want to isolate.
I don't want to do anything. Everything feels incredibly overwhelming
and taxing. And then you jump right back into fight
and flight when you need to, when your husband needs something,
you got to jump right back into it. And it's
this back and forth all the time, which is incredibly

(44:30):
exhausting and incredibly taxing on the system. And then we
have fun, which faun is when the gazelle invites the
lion over for a tea party. And this is the hope,
this is the hope that I can befriend the threat,
I can feel accepted or if it can feel okay
by the threat, and so therefore I don't have to

(44:51):
worry as much. This is where we see the people
pleasing show up, the always saying yes, never saying no,
the lack of boundaries, lack of identity, always doing something
because you want to make sure that you're constantly mitigating
the threat. Also see a lot of emotional codependency. You

(45:12):
show up here too, So if you're okay, I'm okay.
Your emotional wellbeing is very much dictating my emotional wellbeing.
It's that sense of owning something that's not ours. But
realizing that these are all signals. These are all things
that your nervous system is trying to tell you, Hey,
this is a warning signal, this is out of whack.

(45:34):
But all of these things are coming from a deeper route.
These are just symptoms, like we've talked about, of whether
it's fear, whether it's feeling unsafe, feeling like you don't
have any personal power, or whatever it is that's showing up.
These are all symptoms of the bigger issue going on,
but really important to work together with your mind and

(45:58):
your body at the same time to create that homeostasis
and that overall increased capacity to show up for other
people and to be an incredible impath, which is a gift.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
So yeah, yeah, Well, there's one thing we haven't talked about,
and it's coming to mind as you're talking, and that
is the issue of guilt. When my husband had his stroke,
the very first thing that I felt, besides you know,
panic and all of that, was, oh, my god, this
was my fault. I should have known. I should have

(46:32):
seen the symptoms. I wasn't, you know, on top of
things medically with him, all of that stuff. And I
carried that with me for probably a couple of years,
and I would talk to him about it, and I'd
apologize and I'd say, oh, you know, I should have known,
and blah blah blah, you know. And I find that

(46:54):
so much of the issues that we have, and the
buttons and the triggers that we have, when you get
them down to the very root, it's showing something about
feeling guilty somewhere back there. Whether it's a past life
or something in this life or whatever, but there that's
what gets brought up when triggers get activated. Shall we say, so,

(47:16):
what do you how do you work with people with that,
do you do you get to that sort of core place.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Yes, absolutely so. It kind of follows the cascade of
emotions is like we get hurt, we feel sad, we
feel fear afraid, we feel angry, and then we all
land at guilt almost ten times out of ten after
that one. And it comes so much too. I think
from a lot of the parent child conflict that's happening

(47:47):
within our brains is so or in our minds essentially,
is that inner critic, that inner parent that's giving us
this language of you know, we didn't do this, or
we should have done that, or you have to do this.
And where some of these old patterns are coming from,
or these old beliefs of is if there was something

(48:08):
whether it was in your childhood that a memory experience
where you know this happened, where you were told like
you weren't doing enough, you weren't being enough, bad things happened,
and I think it's your fault if you were told that.
Like wherever that comes from, or if that also comes
from a past life as well, is like that holding

(48:29):
on to that belief of this is my fault. I
did this, this, I caused this to happen, and it's
really beautiful when you see and understand like you're just
seeing the same charmic pattern show up, that same more
situations and more scenarios are playing out for you now
in this lifetime because you still believe that about yourself.

(48:51):
You believe you're you're not enough, or you're afraid, or
like this is your fault, your oh whatever it is.
Like I love getting to the root for each of us,
but it does come from that place, and it's so
incredibly transformative and healing for people when you can work
through that and realize like, Okay, this is not the

(49:12):
truth about who I really am. There's nothing wrong with me.
I didn't do this, I didn't cause this. But remembering
like who you really are and how you're infinitely powerful,
and allowing yourself to work through that stuff, having an
open heart, allowing yourself to be really curious about what's

(49:32):
going on, and being able to connect with the moment
and transform whatever you need to, and then it's just
not it's not an issue anymore, which is really beautiful.
I think.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Yeah. I think one of the things that happened from
my husband's stroke was we've done a lot of past
life exploration with each other, and we've seen many lives
that we've been traveling this world together, and it allowed
us to go even deeper and get to some really core,

(50:07):
substantial incidents where we were still feeling guilt with each other,
and we chose various lifetimes to try to work it out.
And this one is definitely the grand finale of working
which is great. I love being able to see it
in that way because it's taken a lot of the

(50:30):
pain away from it. Now it's just kind of an
adventure to see, oh, okay, well, what else are we
going to do to resolve all that old stuff? You know?

Speaker 4 (50:38):
Yes, yeah, absolutely, I love hearing that because it sounds
like you rerived to such a place of acceptance, like
this is like, okay, we know that this old pattern
is not serving us anymore. We can see you know
how we want to do that, and to do it
together is so powerful as well. But yeah, it's such

(50:59):
a fun journey when you go through. It's fun and
equally as hard, Like, if we're really honest, it's definitely
not icy, but realizing like this, I'm perpetuating my own
suffering and like this is not I do not want this,
like I've suffered enough. It's that whole like, Okay, I'm
on my knees. I've suffered enough in this lifetime and

(51:20):
past lifetimes, and I'm ready to like get back to
the remembering of who I am. And gosh, it's such
so so awesome. It's totally worth the cost of admission.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yes, next life is going to be great. Yeah, yeah, or.

Speaker 4 (51:39):
Maybe you could just be done.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
I'm planning it, so, you know, I kind of go
back and forth about what direction I wanted to take,
but we'll see.

Speaker 4 (51:50):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
So so tell us what is your ultimate goal in
helping people with all this? We only have a couple
of minutes. Tell us, tell us what is the ultimate
mission that you have with what you're doing.

Speaker 4 (52:07):
Yeah, my ultimate mission, it really is just to live
my dharma, which is like beyond the mission to end suffering.
So I'm just like I'm still on the journey myself,
like I haven't by any means arrived, but it's that
I just want to end the mission of suffering that

(52:29):
I think so many of us are here and we don't.
We've forgotten who we really are, and we've bought into
the lies and the illusions and it's that return to love,
the return to the divine remembering of who we really are,
and to realize you can have an incredible experience in
this life here and now, and you don't have to

(52:50):
keep suffering these things showing up. And so it's really
such an amazing relationship to have with people and to
walk through them in this journey that it's we heal
alongside of each other. And so every time I get
to work with somebody like I find healing within myself too,

(53:12):
And it's so such a beautiful connection to have with others,
and it's just an amazing place to be in to
do this really sacred, deep work with anybody who comes
my way. So that's my mission really in a nutshell,
and the suffering.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
There you go great. So tell people what you offer,
what exactly are your services, and how do people reach you?

Speaker 4 (53:42):
Absolutely so I do very even though I am a
licensed professional counselor, I do not call myself a traditional
counselor by any means, especially as you've heard some of
a lot of the modalities I like to work in,
hypnotherapy being the primary one, and so I do a
lot of work either in person or online as well,

(54:04):
everything can be done online now, which is absolutely amazing.
So I love to work with people. If you are
sick of your suffering, you want to feel this complete liberation,
then like I'm happy to walk upon the journey with
you and help you rediscover like total love and acceptance.
So that's the work that I do. Yeah, and anything

(54:28):
the mind affects, hypnosis can work on. So from behavior
changes to the you know, stress management, to medical things, pain,
all of this is all connected back. So any of
that kind of work I love to do. And yeah,
happy to help anybody who comes along my way.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Ah. Well, keep up the good work, girl, And I'm
glad you're required from being a first responder because you
doing such important work in so many different fields for anybody,
especially as you say, you know, you work with people
that are first responders and that's just so great.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
What is your website? How do people reach you?

Speaker 4 (55:15):
Yes, so you can go to www dot Sit around
the Fire dot org. That's the primary place for now.
We're making some big shifts come the first of the year,
so my new website will be up soon. It'll be
Ashleydillard dot com. So you'll be able to find me
there as well. But yeah, for now you can connect
with us, sit around the fire dot org and send

(55:36):
us a message and I will get back to you.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
Great. Thank you so much and it was great talking
to you. And as I said, keep up the good work.
Everybody deserves to be free of suffering, that's for sure.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
Absolutely, yes, thank you for having me as a guest.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
It was so cool, my pleasure. Yes, thank you, and
I'll see everybody next Wednesday. Thank you so much,